


Missives from the Black

by ssrhpurgatory



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Also both central characters are dead by the end, F/M, Mild Gore, Past Abuse, Porn, Trauma, hurt/comfort/hurt again, lots of porn, usually plot relevant porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 01:46:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 35
Words: 132,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: An archived version of the chunks of the first (smutty) attempt at No Going Back, which I am currently revising on my other account. The current version is more what was originally envisioned when I started coming up with Terrible Goddard Employee OCs, and it reuses chunks of this (and will continue to do so), but I figure that as long as I’ve got this side account that is entirely Rosemary/Hilbert nonsense, I might as well post this version of it too. Originally written 2018-2019; backdated so that my nonsense is at the bottom of the recently posted feed.
Relationships: Alexander Hilbert/Original Female Character





	1. Introduction and Chapter Guide

**Missives from the Black** is basically all the Hilbert Backstory nonsense I wrote after I accidentally started shipping Hilbert with the Terrible Woman I'd made to be his lab manager, shoved into one giant fic. Some of it's mini-fics, some of it's short stories, some of it's novellas, all of it is a mess because I was just learning how to write fanfic and also because when I tossed it into one big fic like this, I didn't do a very good job of formatting things. This was not the original storyline I made Rosemary for, but it's the one I started writing first, because accidental shipping.

* * *

**The main Original Characters you'll encounter:**

Rosemary Epps: A middle-aged Black woman who hides the fact that she's smarter than you by being pristinely put together at all times. Has approximately a hundred different brightly-colored and extremely well-tailored suits and a million different pairs of brightly-colored reading glasses. Is the lab manager for all high-clearance Biochem research labs, and is, in some ways, Rachel Young's direct predecessor.

Albert Bennett: A force of chaos confined to the body of a 6'8" former Army Sergeant. Surprisingly good at hiding in plain sight for someone so massive and good at talking your story out of you. Sort of the head of security at Goddard, except someone else does that job and he spends a lot of time going around destabilizing things (competing companies, government agencies, foreign governments) for fun an profit.

Adriane Dolmetsch: The archivist in charge of the Black Archives. No one is quite sure whether or not she's actually human, as all of her actual behavior makes her seem like a Goddard Futuristics cryptid. Terrifying. Probably in love with Miranda Pryce.

* * *

**Chapters**

[**Chapter 2:** When you're a middle-aged woman with nothing to lose, might as well sign on with an evil corporation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509380/chapters/51268063)

Rosemary backstory on how she joined Goddard. She has an interview for a lab manager position at Goddard Futuristics with one Arthur Keller... and a second interview with his subordinate, Albert Bennett. Includes a transcript that puts together bits of her past. Rated Teen, mostly, but warnings for grown men being gross towards a pre-teen and teenaged girl plus semi-traumatic pregnancy stuff in the transcript section. _7332 words._

[Chapter 3: Sometimes you realize you're horny for revenge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509380/chapters/51268129#workskin)

Snippets of Rosemary's one-year review, and Pryce and Keller's reaction her reaction. Rated Teen, though there is mention of someone probably being murdered by implication. _942 words._

[Chapter 4: Hilbert takes Cutter's offer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509380/chapters/51268198#workskin)

Hilbert decides to take Mr. Carter up on his offer of a position at Goddard Futuristics. Rated Teen, but there is some gore and more implied murder. _2669 words._

[Chapter 5: Rosemary and Adriane have a chat about Russian Literature](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509380/chapters/51268237#workskin)

Rosemary is pretty certain that Koschei Bessmertnyy is a reference to something, but can't remember. Fortunately Adriane has some answers. Rated Teen. _820 words._

[Chapter 6: This would be a meet-cute but it's more like a meet-depression](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509380/chapters/51268312#workskin)

A somewhat traumatized Hilbert meets Rosemary for the first time. A somewhat lonely Rosemary realizes that oh, no, she's attracted. Rated Teen. _2194 words._

[Chapter 7: Ah, yes, a naked bald Russian](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509380/chapters/51268570#workskin)

Hilbert wakes up in a strange place and takes a very nice shower. Rosemary accidentally catches an eyeful when bringing him breakfast. Both of them are awkward about being attracted. Also includes a tour of the lab building. Rated Teen. _3728 words._

[Chapter 8: An interrogation and the Archives](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509380/chapters/51268711#workskin)

Rosemary picks Hilbert's brain for information about his research so far on Decima, and then takes him to the archives to meet Adriane. Rated Teen. _5522 words._

[Chapter 9: Hilbert gets lost, both figuratively and literally](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509380/chapters/51268753#workskin)

Hilbert decides to try and find his way around the maze that is Goddard Futuristic's campus. He's rescued by Al Bennett, but is faced by the fact that Rosemary clearly already has a relationship in her life. Rated M for overhearing other people having sex. _2447 words._

[Chapter 10: So Much Unnecessary Flirting (and also some science)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509380/chapters/51268834#workskin)

Hilbert gets settled into his new lab, and Rosemary gives her first report to Mr. Carter on how she thinks Hilbert will do. There's an accident in the lab, some flirting, more sniping. Hilbert does not make a good first impression on his lab techs. Rated Teen. _7447 words._

to be finished later.


	2. When you're a middle-aged woman with nothing to lose, might as well sign on with an evil corporation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Goddard Futuristics Job Interview of one Rosemary Epps. Not smutty, mentions of past abuse, pregnancy trauma, and grooming.

_July 23rd, 1976_

Rosemary paused outside the door to the office suite that had been commandeered by the Goddard employees who were here to evaluate Grayson Biotech, the company she worked at. Apparently it was standard operating procedure for Goddard to come in to any company they bought out and do the exit interviews themselves; half of the scientists Rosemary managed had been let go over the past few hours, and all they would tell her about their exit interviews was that the severance package was “unexpected” and the person doing the interviewing was “really not something they could talk about,” which Rosemary found rather foreboding.

She took a deep breath and knocked, and the door was opened by Al Jackson, one of Grayson’s own HR reps… well, for the past four months, at least. He smiled down at her, and the sight of a friendly face relaxed her a little bit.

“I was told to come here to see someone named Mr. Bennett, Al,” Rosemary said, smiling back up at him. “Is he free?”

“Yeah, come on in. The person you want to see is in the inner office. Just knock once and go right in.” Al stepped back and held the door open for her. “Good luck, Miss Rosie. Not that you need it.”

“Thanks, Al.” Rosemary squared her shoulders and took another deep breath, then strode across the anteroom and knocked on the door to the inner office, then immediately opened it.

A tall, thin man, younger than she’d expected, looked up from behind the desk in the room and speared her with a direct, piercing look from strangely pale brown eyes. “Rosemary Epps, I presume,” he said, grinning a rather predatory grin at her.

“Yes, sir,” she said, shutting the door behind her and standing in front of it.

“Come in. Have a seat.”

Rosemary shook her head. “If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Bennett, I don’t think I will. See, this isn’t the first time I’ve been through a merger, and I know how it goes. You’ll sit me down, and talk about all the wonderful changes that are coming down the pipeline now that Grayson and Goddard are as one, and then you’ll tell me that unfortunately, there isn’t any place for someone of my particular talents in this brave new world you plan to build. You have plenty of lab managers of your own. And then you’ll offer me up a severance package that will, most likely, be frankly insulting in the face of the bonuses the C-suite is going to be getting as part of this merger, and I’ll smile and nod and go off and go on my way. So how about we skip directly to the insulting severance package and me going on my way, hm?”

The man burst into surprised laughter at the end of her speech, and clapped his hands together a few times in a manner that was decidedly sarcastic. “Oh, well done, Miss Epps. Or can I call you Rosemary? Rosie?”

“Rosemary is fine, sir,” she said, eying him warily.

“Rosemary, then. I see you have some… misconceptions about the nature of this interview. Let me clear those up for you.” The man picked up a rather full-looking file folder and tapped it against the desk to straighten the papers inside, then laid it flat again and opened it. “I am not Mr. Bennet,” he said, standing and holding a hand out across the desk towards Rosemary. “My name is Arthur Keller, and I am very pleased to meet you.”

Rosemary frowned and crossed the room to take Mr. Keller’s hand, shaking it firmly. “Head of the Communications department at Goddard Futuristics Arthur Keller?” she asked, still eying him with caution.

“One and the same,” he said, sounding amused.

“I see.” Rosemary fell back into one of the visitor chairs that was on her side of the desk in a rather undignified manner, but at the moment dignity was beyond her. “This is the other kind of interview then, isn’t it.”

“You are quick on the uptake, aren’t you.” Mr. Keller’s self-satisfied tone was already beginning to annoy Rosemary.

“Well, then. What kind of a job did you have in mind for me?”

“Oh, don’t be so impatient. There are just a few preliminaries to get out of the way first.”

Rosemary quirked one eyebrow in irritation. “Well, then. Please do continue with the preliminaries, sir.”

“Very well. Your bachelor’s degree is in microbiology?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t that make you a bit overqualified for what is, essentially, an admin position?”

“It’s not unusual for a lab manager to have a degree in a science. Most of us started as research scientists or lab techs. I’m no different.”

“I see,” Mr. Keller made a note on the first page of the file in front of him. “So tell me, how did you wind up here?”

“The usual way. They hired me.” Rosemary lifted her chin and looked Mr. Keller in the eye, an explicit challenge, but he only laughed humorlessly in response.

“I mean how did you wind up here, Miss Epps? You were shaping up to be a brilliant research scientist. You’d published seven papers, all very well received—as a co-author, of course, but the work was yours—as an undergraduate. At least four different research institutions were courting you for graduate school, and I know one company in particular was hoping to snatch you up before then. And you were doing this all as a black woman, in the 1950s, when there were still plenty of places in this country where there were laws against you being in the same classroom as whites. But you did it. And then… nothing. You never finished your thesis, you barely scraped together enough credits to graduate, and all those sparkling offers disappeared. So what happened, Rosemary?” As he’d made this speech, Mr. Keller stood up, resting his weight on his hands as he leaned further and further over the desk towards Rosemary, his direct gaze boring in to her. She swallowed dryly, but kept eye contact, certain that if she was the first to look away he would eat her alive… and she wasn’t entirely certain that was metaphorical with Mr. Keller.

She leaned forward in her chair, not daring to blink, and smoothed her face into the smiling, pleasant mask that came so easily. “I’d ask how you know all that, sir, given that it happened twenty years ago, but I imagine you have your ways.”

“Oh, I’ve only heard a rumor or two,” Mr. Keller said, subsiding back into his chair and glancing down at the file in front of him—her file, Rosemary realized. And a very complete one it must be. “But I’m more interested in the truth,” he added, catching her again with those strange pale brown eyes of his. “So what really happened?”

She tilted her head to one side, considering for a moment, and then shrugged. “You must have read my personnel file. I’m difficult to work with.”

Mr. Keller laughed again, a laugh with real humor this time. It creased the corners of his eyes and made him look almost human for a moment, instead of like what Rosemary assumed a shark would look like if it were put in a very realistic human suit. “I do like someone who knows when to be discreet. And I like difficult people. They get things done.” The humor faded, leaving only the predator behind. “Are you interested in getting things done for me, Rosemary?”

“That depends entirely on what you want me to do, sir,” she said in what she felt was a remarkably calm voice under the circumstances.

“Well, let’s see…” He paged through the file. “Tell me about your time with EL Pharmaceuticals.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I’m rather curious about the, oh, how to put this delicately…” Mr. Keller smiled another shark-toothed grin. “The human resources side of your position there.”

“You’re talking about the trials on human subjects, aren’t you.” Rosemary looked down at her hands, examining her nails with exaggerated interest. “I wasn’t involved in that whole fiasco, thank goodness.”

“Weren’t you?”

Rosemary looked up at Mr. Keller with what she hoped was a piercing gaze of her own, and he seemed a little taken aback, so she thought it might have worked. “Of course not. I didn’t let my lab experiment on anyone who might be missed.”

Mr. Keller laughed softly at that. “Rapists,” he said, his tone somewhat intrigued. “Abusers. Murderers. Especially those of children. An elegant solution.”

“I found it to be so. It helped with the… ethical objections certain of my scientists had.”

“I see. And you have no objection yourself to carrying out other such… experimental trials in the future?”

“None whatsoever. Provided, of course, my standards for what makes an acceptable subject are met.”

Mr. Keller gave her a thin-lipped, closed-mouth smile. “I think we can arrange that, yes.”

“Well. Are the preliminaries over, then?”

“For now.” Mr. Keller pulled a stack of papers out of the folder in front of him and placed it in front of her. “You’ll eventually be in charge of a team of five, some of the top scientists in the world. It’s likely they will rotate in and out from some of our satellite locations from time to time. The core group you will be in charge of is chemical and biological research, including virology and pharmaceuticals—and don’t give me that look, your job history is sufficiently broad to deal with anything in those overarching categories, and I’m sure plenty more beyond that.”

Rosemary lowered her skeptical eyebrow. “Well, yes, probably.” She picked up the contract and started flipping through it, her eyebrows flying up her forehead in surprise when she reached the section on compensation. “This is… generous.”

“We will expect you to be on call 24/7,” Mr. Keller said. “Of course we’re offering an on-site apartment and enough money to make it worth your while.”

Rosemary hmmed noncommittally, then flipped back to the start of the contract. “I’d like the weekend to think it over.”

“Rosemary, I’m a very busy man. I can’t wait on other people to dither and dally about what decision they plan to make.”

“You’re assuming that this offer is something I can’t resist.” Rosemary set the contract down on the desk, and met Mr. Keller’s eye. “Well. It’s not. Even for the amount you’re paying, you’re asking a hell of a lot of me. I need the weekend to decide whether or not it will be worth it when the work you’re offering me isn’t any different than what I could find at half a dozen other companies, if I chose to really sell myself to them.”

The corner of Mr. Keller’s mouth twitched angrily. “Very well. You can have the weekend.”

Rosemary picked the contract up again and gave Mr. Keller her brightest and most cheerful corporate smile. “Thank you, sir. I’ll let your contact here know when I’ve made a decision.”

Mr. Keller raised an eyebrow. “My contact?”

“That tall drink of water out in the anteroom. He’s one of yours, isn’t he.”

Mr. Keller smiled humorlessly. “You really are quick on the uptake, aren’t you, Rosemary.”

“Indeed.” Rosemary stood, doing her best to disguise how shaky her knees still were. “Are we done here, sir?”

Mr. Keller nodded, and Rosemary turned to leave the office. She shut the office door behind her and slumped a little, then turned an incandescent glare on Al, who was leaning against the opposite wall of the anteroom. “You bastard. You’re Mr. Bennett, aren’t you.”

Al laughed. He couldn’t help it. She simply looked so damn indignant.

“You could have warned me,” Rosemary muttered.

“Would it have helped, Miss Rosie?” Al asked, relieved her tone was more annoyed than angry.

“No, probably not,” she said, before taking a deep breath and straightening her spine out. “Still, that was a nasty sort of trick to play on someone.”

“Ah. Well. There is that.” He frowned at her a little. “Am I still welcome tonight?”

Rosemary bit her lip and considered for a moment. “Dinner,” she said, finally. “I’ll eat dinner with you.”

Al nodded. “Fair enough. I’ve got work to do, but I’ll see you at…” he examined his watch. “Lord, you were in there longer than I thought. Seven thirty? At that brewery round the corner?”

“No. My apartment. I’m not sure I can face the rest of humanity this evening.”

“You sure?” Rosemary nodded. “Well. See you then, darling.” He crossed the room and reached out to chuck her gently under the chin, and she let him, though he expected it was force of will alone that kept her from jerking away from his touch. He let his fingers linger there, examining her face for a moment, and she examined him back, a little frown creasing a line between her eyebrows. “It will be all right, Miss Rosie. I promise.”

She opened her mouth as if to respond, and then shut it again, still frowning. After a long, quiet moment, she spoke again. “Who should I send your way next?”

“We’re done with your lab,” he said. “It’s just c-suite from here on out. So you just go on back to work. And don’t you worry about a thing.”

It was like watching a switch flip, Al thought. One moment Rosemary was all indignation and uncertainty, and the next her shoulders were squared off, her face smoothed out, a neutral smile painting her lips as she strode past him to the door back to the hallway and left without once looking his way again. Well, as much as a woman with her lack of height and abundance of hip could stride. It was a good deal more like sashaying, really.

Al shook his head, smiling, then knocked on the office door she’d come out of.

“Enter!”

Al opened the door to find Mr. Keller staring down at the file in front of him with an irritated frown on his face.

“Which offer did you end up giving her?” asked Al, curious.

“The basic one.”

Al frowned as well. “I’m not sure that will be enough to tempt her.”

Mr. Keller sighed. “I know. She said as much to my face. But I couldn’t give her the enhanced offer. There are just too many unknown variables.”

“Look, sir, I know she’ll be a good fit for Pryce. If it’s an issue with the profile I assembled…”

Mr. Keller shook his head. “Oh, no, that profile is some of your best work. But it still has gaps. And it’s those gaps I’m worried about.”

“She wouldn’t say anything about it, then?”

“No.” Mr. Keller looked down at the file, contemplative. “I agree that she’ll be an excellent fit for Pryce, but I also think she’s more volatile than you’ve realized. And I’m not letting her in until I know her weak points. All of them.”

“Give me the other offer.”

“Al.”

“Look, sir, I’ll get you what you need. Right now, as far as she can tell, you’re offering her the same thing she could get any one of a dozen other places. She might still walk away. But Pryce… She’ll want that. Enough to set aside her caution. I can get her for you, sir.”

Mr. Keller looked up at Al with a curious expression on his face. “I know why I want her. But why are you so enthusiastic about this woman, Al? Has your stone heart been pierced at last?”

Al laughed at that. “Definitely not, sir. But I like her. And I think… I think she’s capable of the kind of loyalty you need. She just needs the right incentive.” Al returned the curious look. “If you don’t mind, sir, why are you so interested?”

Mr. Keller pulled a stapled stack of papers out of the file in front of him. “Biofuels.” He waved the paper in Al’s direction, and Al glanced at it, recognizing one of the old published papers of Rosemary’s that he’d managed to unearth in his research into her past. “As a college student, she managed to cultivate a strain of bacteria that produced a clean-burning biofuel from food scraps and human waste, something that our scientists are just now starting to look into. Goddard Futuristics was trying to recruit her, until whatever happened to her happened, and both she and her research disappeared off the face of the earth.” Al handed the paper back to Mr. Keller, who eyed it with distaste. “If I’d been with the company back then… she should have been ours. I don’t like feeling as if I’ve had toys that should have been mine snatched away before I knew they existed.”

Al frowned. “But she isn’t that, not any more. She hasn’t done any original research since college. Why do you want her now?”

“I still want the toys that should have been mine, Al. Even if they’re broken now.”  
  


“What’s that?” Rosemary had answered her door with a smile, but her eye was immediately drawn by the plain manila envelope Al was holding. Al smiled down at her.

“I’ll tell you after dinner, Rosie. What’s on the menu?”

Rosemary fidgeted. “I thought about cooking, but I was too wound up.”

At Al’s muttered “Thank God,” she glared.

“So,” she continued in a newly irate tone of voice, “I grabbed some Chinese on the way home.”

“Excellent,” said Al, holding up the brown paper bag in his other hand. “I brought you some of that awful cheap whiskey you like so much.”

“You are forgiven for the dig at my cooking. I could use a drink.”

“Your cooking is terrible, Rosie.”

“Not forgiven enough for me to share my Chinese food.”

“Oh, come on now, darlin’, you know that was work. Can't hold that against me.”

He followed her into her kitchen, the two of them bantering all the way, Al smiling. He’d hoped that Rosie would forgive him easily, but until now he had expected that he’d lose her as a friend.

It wouldn’t have hurt, not for long, but that didn’t stop him from being grateful that she was still willing to talk to him.

They kept the conversation light and cheerful over dinner, perched on tall chairs at the island in her kitchen, eating cheap Chinese food out of the cartons with forks. Al suspected it was helping them both unwind.

Afterwards, they settled on either end of her couch in the living room, her nursing a glass of cheap whiskey that made her wince every time she took a sip of it, him with a glass of water.

“So,” she said.

“So,” he responded.

“So your name is Albert Bennett,” she said, to Al’s surprise. He’d expected her to jump straight to the issue of the manila envelope, but it seemed like she had some other plan.

“Yes.”

“You mind letting me know what other little lies you’ve been telling me over the past four months?”

Al laughed at that. “Just the last name, darlin’. I’m not very good at the lying part of subterfuge.”

Rosemary raised a skeptical eyebrow at that. “Sure you’re not.”

Al shrugged and took a sip of his water before answering. “Half truths are easier to keep track of than outright lies. And stories… well, all stories have a grain of truth to them, don’t they?”

“So you’re really ex-military.”

“That’s right.”

“Why Jackson?”

“It’s my job. I’m sort of a jack of all trades over at Goddard.”

Rosemary frowned, sipping her whiskey, just distracted enough by her own thoughts to not bother wincing at the taste of it. “Tell me about Goddard.”

“What do you want to know?”

“How long have you been there for?”

“A couple of years. Got hired just a bit before Mr. Keller, in fact.”

“Hm.” Rosemary took another sip of her whiskey, staring down into it contemplatively. “And how long have you been with Mr. Keller?”

Al laughed again, startled. “Good Lord, Rosie, how your brain does make leaps of fancy.”

Rosemary raised another skeptical eyebrow. “Am I wrong?”

“No.”

“How long?”

“Longer than I’ve been with Goddard.”

“That’s not an answer, Al.”

Al shrugged. “It’s the only answer I have to give right now.” He leaned across the couch towards her and raised his eyebrows. “Classified, and all that. Tell you and I’d have to kill you.”

Rosemary eyed him, amused, and shook her head. “I really can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

Al went serious. “Not a joke.”

Rosemary’s amused expression disappeared too. “I see.” She glanced over his shoulder at the side table behind him, where he’d set the manila envelope when they’d moved to the living room. “You planning to tell me about that, then?”

“You tell me something first, Rosie.” At her nod, he continued. “You planning to take the offer Mr. Keller gave you?”

Rosemary made a face. “Oh, Al, I don’t know.” She sighed, studying her half-empty whiskey glass. “It’s… it’s asking a lot, even given the compensation package.”

Al made a noncommittal noise.

“And, you know, I’ve got a whole six months of salary saved up. I can choose to be picky.”

“Rosie, you know Goddard’s the top of the top.”

“And I have no assurances that they won’t get tired of me being difficult after six months or a year and kick me to the curb,” said Rosemary angrily, taking another sip of her whiskey. “After you’ve been kicked out by the top dog, your value depreciates quite drastically, Al. I’d rather work a string of jobs like the one I’ve had with Grayson than find it impossible to get another job in the field at all after being dumped by Goddard.”

“I see.” Al settled back on the couch, considering Rosemary. He’d expected any number of objections on her part to the job with Goddard, but this was one he hadn’t quite foreseen. He took another sip of water to buy himself a little time to think. “What would it take for you to say yes?”

Rosemary was studying him as well, a little frown turning the corners of her mouth down. “I don’t know.”

Al sighed, and picked up the envelope, waving it in Rosemary’s line of sight, watching her eyes follow it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he told himself. “How about Miranda Pryce?”

Rosemary’s breath left her in a rush, and she stared at the envelope with wide eyes. “Dr. Miranda Pryce?”

Al raised an eyebrow. “So you’ve heard of her, then.”

Rosemary let out a shaky laugh. “Of course I’ve heard of Miranda Pryce. The woman’s a goddamn polymath, Al. Top of the field in every field she’s interested in. Every major leap forward in computing, mechanics, bioengineering in the past twenty years can be laid at her feet.” Rosemary sighed, and leaned back in her chair. “Yes, Al, I’d like to work with Miranda Pryce.” She sighed again, looking off into the far corner of her living room ceiling. “I’d never be able to keep up with her, but I’d give any damn thing they wanted to take from me for the chance to work for Dr. Pryce.”

“Well,” said Al, using his free hand to pull a small, pocket recorder, one of Pryce’s specials, out of his pocket. “I can get you that position. But in exchange, Mr. Keller wants everything, Rosie.”

Rosemary stared at him, a little frown between her eyebrows. “What do you mean, everything?”

“We know a lot about you, Rosie.”

“I noticed.”

“But there are still gaps. And Mr. Keller… he wants to know it all.”

“I see.” Rosemary stared at the manila envelope, rubbing her fingertips across her cheek, contemplative. “Well.”

“Well.”

“Tell me what you know and I’ll try and fill in the gaps for you.”

Al smiled. “All right. Mind if I record you?” He held up the small recording device, and Rosemary’s eyes widened, noticing it for the first time.

“Well now, that is slick,” she said, impressed. “Very well. But I get to take a look at that thing later.”

Al laughed. “A pretty little toy, isn’t it? One of Pryce’s.”

“Very pretty. Shall we get on with it, then?”

Al turned the recorder on and set it on the couch between them, then pulled out his notebook and a pen, scribbling a few names and dates. “Right. Here are the involved parties, near as I can figure. Your ex-husband, his lover, and, well, half the staff of the biology department from your college. And… your child.”

He held the notebook out to Rosemary, and she scanned the list, then seemed to freeze in place for a moment. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “I think you did get all the major players down. So tell me, what do you think happened?”

Al shrugged. “Near as I can tell? You got yourself knocked up, married the father, but someone in the department got jealous and put out a smear campaign on you. Then, you found out your husband had a male lover and broke it off with him on the grounds of infidelity, but he kept the kid and raised him with his lover.”

Rosemary froze, then said cautiously, “That’s… a little too close for comfort while not being at all right, I’m afraid.”

Al frowned at Rosemary’s caution. “Rosie, you don’t have to do this. I can always go back to Keller and tell him you didn’t bite.”

Rosemary shook her head. “No, no, might as well make my mortification complete,” she said, picking up the recording device. “My name is Rosemary Abigail Epps, and I give my consent for this audio recording.” She frowned a little, staring down at the names that Al had written down. “I’m just not sure where to start.” Rosemary stared at the names a little longer, then sighed. “Well. Might as well clear one thing up right away. Yes, I married Ric Herrera. Yes, I was pregnant when I did so. Yes, he and his partner raised that child.” Rosemary sighed again. “But no, he wasn’t the father.”

“Who was?” asked Al, cautiously.

Rosemary tapped the name of her thesis advisor. “Him. Don’t ask me to say his name out loud, I still can’t bear to. You’ll just have to fill in the blanks for your Mr. Keller.” Rosemary’s face had twisted a bit with a barely-hidden anguish as she’d pointed out the name of her child’s father. And then, she continued.

“You know, I was eleven the first time a man old enough to be my father told me I had nice tits and tried to get me to touch his penis. He was a friend of my father’s. And I got away from him and went to my parents and told them what had happened, and they didn’t believe me.”

“Well. That was just the first time something like that happened. It wasn’t the last. But I was smart, and determined, and somehow despite all the men who just looked at me and saw a nice piece of ass, I made it through my teenaged years relatively unscathed.”

“Take a girl like that, make her nineteen, twenty. Add in yet another man old enough to be her father, only this man, instead of telling her she has nice tits, he tells her she’s smart. He tells her she’s brilliant, the only woman brilliant enough to keep up with him, his true intellectual partner. He tells this girl that even though he’s married, he really just stays with his wife because of the children, that there’s no love there, that he’ll divorce his wife and marry her, just give him time. And until then, why not give him everything else?”

As Rosemary kept talking, telling the story of a man who should have never been allowed near her, of parents who had abandoned her, of the gay couple who had rescued her in more ways than one, of the child she hadn’t been able to bear to be a mother to, of the way she’d lost the self she’d once been… well. He’d never been the sort to think in terms of heartbreak, but all the same, his heart broke a bit for the girl Rosemary had once been.

_Transcript of the interview_

Bennett: [inaudible]

Epps: No, no, its fine. Might as well make my mortification complete. [voice becomes a bit clearer] My name is Rosemary Abigail Epps, and I give my consent for this audio recording.

I’m just not sure where to start.

[long silence, then a sigh]

Well. Might as well clear one thing up right away. Yes, I married Ric Herrera. Yes, I was pregnant when I did so. Yes, he and his partner raised that child. [a long pause] But no, neither of them were the father.

Bennett: [inaudible]

Epps: [the sound of tapping] Him. No, don’t make me say his name. I still can’t bear to. You’ll just have to fill in the blanks for Mr. Keller. 

[a long pause] 

You know, I was eleven the first time a man old enough to be my father told me I had nice tits and tried to get me to touch his penis. He was a friend of my father’s. And I got away from him and went to my parents and told them what had happened, and they didn’t believe me.

Well. That was just the first time something like that happened. It wasn’t the last. But I was smart, and determined, and somehow despite all the men who just looked at me and saw a nice piece of ass, I made it through my teenaged years relatively unscathed.

Take a girl like that, make her nineteen, twenty. Add in yet another man old enough to be her father, only this man, instead of telling her she has nice tits, he tells her she’s smart. He tells her she’s brilliant, the only woman brilliant enough to keep up with him, his true intellectual partner. He tells this girl that even though he’s married, he really just stays with his wife because of the children, that there’s no love there, that he’ll divorce his wife and marry her, just give him time. And until then, why not give him everything else?

I’d like to say I didn’t fall for it. But I was so hungry for what he had to offer. And he was my thesis advisor, so there were plenty of long, private meetings.

He didn’t like to use protection. And I was stupid enough to think that if the withdrawal method didn’t work, he’d do the right thing, divorce his wife right away, marry me and give our child a father. Looking back on it now… god, how naive. How did I even think that was going to work? But I thought it. And of course I got pregnant. And when I went to him… he told me he knew a doctor who could take care of it for me.

Naturally, I was devastated. I threatened to tell his wife about us, and he… god, it was almost overnight. He knew too many people, you see. All he had to do was call them up, say the right things, and suddenly everything I’d been so proud of was gone, wiped away in the face of being an uppity colored woman who was “difficult to work with.” Hell, most of the professors in the department got swept up in it too. Suddenly I went from being the department’s golden child to being a problem that needed to be swept under the rug, and I was so busy just trying to survive the day-to-day…

I was never going to get an abortion. It wasn’t very safe back in those days. Being illegal most places will do that to a medical procedure. I thought perhaps, if I went to my parents… they were so proud of me. Their bright, beautiful daughter, with her offers from graduate schools and a bright, beautiful future ahead of her. Surely they’d support me through anything.

Turns out that they didn’t care as much for a daughter who got herself knocked up by a married man.

College and room and board were all paid up through the end of the semester, so I just went back there. I didn’t know what else to do. But the whispers, the snubs, the fact that everything I’d worked for had disappeared overnight, just like that… And then I found myself on top of the science building. And I was so, so ready to make it all go away.

Ric found me there. Your file on me knows he was a lab instructor, right? I guess he’d been working late, cleaning things up and getting everything ready for the next day, and he saw me walking past. He told me later that he’d called out my name and I didn’t react at all, and I always had time to stop and say hello to him. So he followed me to the roof. Startled the hell out of me when he threw his arm across my shoulders, but it also startled me out of considering the best way to climb over the guard rail, so I forgave him eventually. And he just… he looked at me, and he said “Tell me your side, Rosemary.” So I did, and when I was done he handed me his handkerchief, and he said “I’ll marry you, Rosemary,” just like that.

I didn’t know what to think about it, not at first. But then he took me home, and he introduced me to Jamie. And poor Jamie… I’ve never met a man who wanted to be a father more, not to this day. But no agency was going to let a single man adopt a kid, not even a well-respected professor of philosophy. And a gay couple… well, even less of a chance.

No one would have believed me marrying Jamie out of the blue. But marrying Ric, well, that won me back just enough respectability to finish out the semester. I managed to graduate, just barely.

I’d been too busy to think about the… the reality of the baby before then. But by then I was six months along, and the baby was getting more and more active every day, and all I could think was that I did not want this. The changes to my body revolted me, the feeling of it kicking inside me made me want to claw it out of my stomach. Ric and Jamie had their own routine, and without school to keep me busy I just… stopped. Over the next couple of months, I stopped leaving the house unless Jamie and Ric dragged me along, I barely managed to shower and dress each day. I wasn’t eating enough on my own, I couldn’t make myself… When I was about eight months along, I had a collapse, wound up in the hospital. My system was overtaxed.

I think the doctors thought I was faking it, at first. I was fat even back then, and, well, obviously a black woman could only be doing this for the drama of it. Thankfully, Jamie was the one who found me unconscious in the bathroom, and he tore them a new one. Funny how doctors will take a white man seriously when he gets going.

I don’t remember much of the next few weeks. Jamie said later that it was like I’d just lost the will to live.

They decided a c-section was the best chance of both me and the baby surviving. Ric okayed it, because I was in no place to give informed consent. And after…

I wasn’t comatose, not exactly. But even with the baby gone, everything was still so hard. Because despite it all, I still thought I loved him. If he had shown up at the hospital, I would have gone with him in an instant, despite his abandonment, despite the shreds he’d ripped my reputation into. And without him… without his good opinion, without his presence in my life, it didn’t seem like my life was worth living any more.

Ric didn’t understand. He kept trying to bring the baby to me, kept acting like I’d snap out of it, become a mother if he could just get me to hold my son. But I couldn’t bear to be near the baby. I screamed, I cried, I wailed, I shoved away anyone who tried to bring the baby close to me.

But Jamie, dear, sweet Jamie, for all he wanted desperately to be a father… somehow he was the one who understood why I couldn’t bear to be a mother to the baby I’d given birth to. He came to me every day, just to sit and talk, whether I was capable of responding or not. Simple things, like how the weather was outside, or what he’d bought at the grocery store.

They’d moved me to a long-term care ward for the mentally ill at that point. Well. There was no way I could function on my own, and after the way I’d been reacting the past few weeks, there was no way anyone was letting me live in the same house as the baby. There was talk of sending me to an asylum, but Jamie kept fighting against it, kept saying that he could get through to me, if he just kept talking.

He was right. One day, he sat down with me, and he told me a story about a young man who, in his words, should have been old enough to know better. About a young man who fell desperately in love with an older man, a man who pushed his boundaries, who had sex with him without protection, sometimes without consent, and how that young man allowed it because he was so, so in love. About how that older man broke the young man’s heart, in the end.

And he said to me, he said “Rosie, you can let him take every other damn thing from you. You might even never be able to love someone ever again. Heaven knows I didn’t think I ever would, not until I met Ric. But if you do not get out there and live, he wins.”

Somehow that got through to me, when nothing else did.

It took another couple of months, months of talking with Jamie every day, months of slowly going out into the world again. I still refused to meet the baby, but I was… well, I was going to say I was me again, but the truth is I’d left behind the Rosemary I’d been before. I look back on her sometimes, that precious, precocious child, and sometimes I even miss being her, but I haven’t been her for a very long time. She’s a stranger to me.

But I was someone new, and this new me wasn’t going to give up anything she wasn’t willing to give up.

I gave up love. I gave up kissing, too, because every time I tried to kiss someone I just saw his face in front of mine, felt his lips… but I couldn’t quite bring myself to give up sex. I made sure I was never unprotected again, but I wasn’t going to give up something that felt so good.

And then… I moved on. Turned out that he hadn’t quite turned everyone in the department against me. One of the female lab instructors got in contact with me, introduced me to a friend she’d gone to school with who was running a corporate lab halfway across the country. I wound up there as a lab tech.

They tried to move me towards doing more research after a few months there, but I couldn’t… I’d lost my confidence. I could carry out other peoples instructions just fine, and I could put together proposals with the best of them, but when it came to executing them, I just didn’t have what it took any more. So instead, the lab manager took me on, started teaching me what he knew. And before I knew it, I was up for a lab manager position in a satellite lab.

It didn’t last long, of course; the satellite lab was only temporary, and when the job was done the company offered me the choice of going back to being a lab tech, with a significant pay cut, or being let go with a small amount of severance. I chose the severance and started over again at a new company.

After a couple of years, Ric got a divorce on the basis of abandonment, and all of my ties with him and the baby were officially severed. Ric tries to send me pictures every once in a while. I mostly toss them in the trash. He looks more and more like his father with each passing year, and I can’t bear to look at him.

I’m sure you’ve seen my job history, so you know the rest. One job after another, references that were never anything less than spectacular, always from companies that could never quite bring themselves to prioritize me.

And that’s it, really. The whole sordid story.

Is that enough for your Mr. Keller, do you think?

Al flipped the recording device off and stared at Rosemary, his face pulling itself into a frown. Before this interview, he’d been sure what Rosemary was; someone else like him, someone who had lost their humanity a long time ago, someone who could commit to a cause with everything they had.

But now, he wasn’t sure.

He didn’t know what made him suddenly uncertain. He thought, though, that the way she’d said that the girl she’d once been was a stranger to her had something to do with it.

Because he’d seen that girl, peeking out from behind Rosemary’s mask as she’d talked about what her thesis advisor had done to her. That girl was still waiting to grow up, to learn how to be human again.

And Al was pretty sure that if Rosemary went to Goddard, that girl would never get a chance to live in the real world again.

Al had been silent since Rosemary had finished speaking, and she gave him a questioning look. “Al? Will that do?”

Al cleared his throat. “Yes, I think so.” He looked down at the recording device, wanting to crush it. “You know, Rosie, that this isn’t the sort of job you leave by conventional means.”

In his peripheral vision, he could see that Rosemary was looking steadily at him. “Yes, I know.”

“I could get rid of this recording. Tell Mr. Keller you weren’t interested.”

“It would be a lie.” Rosemary picked her glass up off the side table, and downed the rest of the cheap whiskey in it, wincing as it hit her throat. “Mr. Keller saying he has the best scientists in the world means nothing to me. So do other companies. But Dr. Pryce…” Rosemary’s voice was full of longing. “She actually is the best. And I have to know, Al. I have to know if I can keep up with the best. Because if I can, I become indispensable, don’t I.”

Al laughed a little at that. “It’s true that Pryce tends to, ah, be rough on her lab managers. It would be a relief to not have to try and find someone new for her every three months.”

“So I have to try.” Rosemary gave him a pleading look. “Please, Al?”

Al sighed, and held the manila envelope out to Rosemary. “All right. Just… there’s no going back, not once you’ve opened that. So be sure.”

Rosemary took the envelope, her eyes glowing with excitement. “I’m sure.”


	3. Sometimes you realize you're horny for revenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rosemary's One-Year Bonus. Not smutty, some Pryce and Cutter being them.

_August 1st, 1977_

“One more thing, Miss Epps.” Rosemary stayed seated, watching as Mr. Keller dug in the drawer of his desk for something. “Now where is it…” He muttered. “Ah. Here we are.” He produced an envelope with a flourish, holding it out across the desk in Rosemary’s direction. She took it, raising a dubious eyebrow.

“And what is this, sir?”

Mr. Keller smiled. “Call it a… bonus. For a good first year on the job.”

Rosemary remained dubious. After her first year at Goddard, under Arthur Keller’s… unique style of management, she was fairly certain that any bonus would come with strings attached. And after the extremely critical—but fair, she reminded herself, she really did need to improve in all the ways he’d mentioned—end-of-year review he’d just put her through, she wasn’t sure she deserved a bonus of any kind anyway. “I don’t recall a bonus structure being part of my contract,” she said, laying the envelope back on the table. “So I’d rather not take this until I know what sort of strings are attached. What do you want from me? More weekend hours? I’m afraid I’ll have to negotiate Goddard paying for a laundry service, if that’s the case.”

Mr. Keller laughed at that. “No strings attached at all.” He remained cheerful and almost human, smiling across his desk at her. “You’re the first person who had managed to work as Pryce’s lab manager for more than a few weeks without quitting in a huff. And on top of that, you’ve managed to increase the efficiency of your team of scientists by a good 10%.”

Rosemary’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “So much?”

“Oh, yes.” Mr. Keller smiled and nudged the envelope back in her direction. “You’ve earned this.”

Rosemary picked the envelope up, eying it curiously now. “What kind of bonus is it? Stock options?”

“Why don’t you open it and see,” said Mr. Keller in a caressing tone.

Rosemary slit the envelope open with her finger and pulled out… were those newspaper clippings? She set the empty envelope on the desk and examined the first one.

‘Professor Emeritus Resigns in Disgrace’ was the title, and it was a clipping from the newspaper her alma mater ran, from May that year. She scanned the article, eyes wide, then set it aside and looked at the second clipping. An obituary, from just a few weeks ago. Very simple, just a few lines with name and surviving family.

Rosemary placed the obituary on top of the article with a shaking hand, and then folded her hands in her lap, staring across the desk at Mr. Keller with wide eyes. Suddenly she felt nineteen again, that impetuous, uncertain girl she’d been when her life had started to change for the worse, only she hadn’t known at the time where it would lead.

Mr. Keller smiled. “Goddard takes care of its own, Rosemary. I take care of my own.”

Rosemary nodded. “I understand, sir.” The bonus had come with strings attached… but these, she did not mind binding herself with. She took a deep breath, composing herself, and stood, tilting her head towards the newspaper clippings. “That can go in the the trash.”

Mr. Keller gave her a gleeful grin and swept the pieces of paper off his desk and into the trash can he kept under his desk. Rosemary smiled back and went to leave, but paused by the door to the office and turned back towards Mr. Keller, a small frown on her face.

“If you don’t mind me asking, sir… Do you know how he died?”

Mr. Keller’s smile was close-mouthed and thin-lipped, and his voice disapproving, and he looked down at the papers on his desk as he answered. “I believe he committed suicide. Shot himself in the head.” Mr. Keller looked back up at Rosemary, meeting her eye, his expression almost warm. “It turns out he could not weather the loss of his professional reputation nearly as well as you were able to, Rosemary.”

Rosemary gave Mr. Keller a real smile, not one of her manufactured, corporate masks, and he looked startled for a moment, then rueful. Rosemary wondered for a moment what would happen if she lingered. “Thank you, sir,” she said instead. “Time for me to get back to work.”

“You always do.”

“How did Rosemary like her bonus?” Miranda asked without preamble as she shut the door of Arthur’s office behind her.

“Oh, excessively,” Arthur replied with a smile. “In fact, for a moment, I almost thought she was going to make a play for me.”

Miranda's eyebrows flew up her forehead in surprise. “Were you tempted?”

“Oh, you know I leave that sort of thing to you young people these days.”

Miranda scoffed. “I’m sure you do.”

“I will admit that the thought was briefly intriguing.” He cleared his throat and looked down at a file on his desk. “Al does seem to enjoy her… attributes.” Miranda scoffed again, and Arthur continued, a little defensively. “I'm sure, given your predilections, that you've noticed her particular charms yourself, Miranda, so don't pretend you haven't.”

Miranda examined her nails in a bored manner for a moment, then sighed. “All right, Arthur, she does have very nice tits, I'll give you that. But really, Al would be so disappointed if she got a go at you first.”

Arthur laughed. “Well, there is that. But no. Nothing more than a moment of intrigue. And as I'm more than satisfied with your companionship, Miranda, I certainly didn't consider anything beyond that.”

Miranda smiled across the desk at Arthur, sharp and humorless. “Glad to hear it.”


	4. Hilbert Takes Cutter’s Offer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not smutty, some gore.

“I’ll be at that address until noon tomorrow. If you’re coming, find me before I leave.”

January 18th, 1989, 7:30 AM, St. Petersburg

Dmitri stared down at the little rectangle of cardboard and scoffed. The man who had given it to him—this Mr. Carter—had been very persuasive, but it would take more than a few oblique threats and the offer of a state-of-the-art lab to make a defector out of Dmitri Vologin.

It was tempting. Of course it was tempting. But he did not think he would still be himself, if he left Russia. Not in that way, at the very least. Slinking off in secret, to join a big American corporation… No. That was not his way.

Dmitri went to rip the card up, but he paused, frowning, and set it down on his kitchen table as he went to put on his coat and hat. Well. It was not yet noon. He had taken the night to consider it, but, perhaps… it was true, what Mr. Carter had said. Comrade Kinski was far less lenient than Dmitri’s previous superior had been. He wanted results, and he wanted them now, and he had been bringing that pressure to bear on Dmitri these past few weeks with increasing strength.

It was with that thought in mind that Dmitri picked the card up on his way out of the house, slipping it into a little slit in the lining of his coat before doing up the final button. He was not going to use the address, of course.

But it never hurt to have a backup plan.

“Tell me. Did Comrade Kinski take the bait?”

“I do believe so, sir.”

“Excellent work, gentlemen.”

Dmitri got to his lab to find it in an uproar. From the sound of it, one of the lab techs was having a panic attack in a closet, his research partner, Kostya, was nowhere to be found. Comrade Kinski had taken up station in the middle of Dmitri’s lab, overseeing a group of men who were removing some of the more specialized equipment—equipment that was necessary for Dmitri’s work—from the lab.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Kinski raised an eyebrow at Dmitri. “You were warned of what the result would be if you kept failing to bring me results, Comrade Vologin. This equipment will be put to better use by scientists who are actually producing results that will benefit the party.”

Dmitri was filled with a white-hot anger. “The results of this work will benefit humanity,” he snarled.

Kinski scoffed. “What do I care about humanity? Just be glad that I am leaving you with what you need to get on with your work for a few months more. Perhaps if you have some results in that time, I will consider bringing some of this equipment back, yes?”

Dmitri balled his hands into fists and clamped his mouth shut. He could not give in to the urge to launch himself at Kinski, to beat the man into a pulp. In all likelihood, Kinski’s goons would pull him off in an instant, and it would be Dmitri who found himself beaten to a pulp.

“Kinski’s leaving Vologin’s lab, sir.”

“Excellent. Let’s see if we’ve provided the right amount of leverage for our dear scientist, shall we? Is everything ready?”

“Almost, sir.”

“Make sure it’s good to go in five minutes. I don’t pay you to be almost ready.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dmitri waited in angry silence until Kinski was gone. The man was just waiting for an excuse to do worse to Dmitri than he and his men had already done, but Dmitri wasn’t planning to give him the opportunity.

Once the last of Kinski’s goons was out the door, Dmitri sprang into action, checking the remaining freezer and letting out a relieved sigh. Good. His samples were still there.

But, he had decided over the past half hour of indignities heaped upon him by Kinski, neither the samples nor he would be here for much longer.

“Vologin is on his way.”

“Excellent. What was that you said about needing one final touch? Oh, I see. Well, that will have to wait for Doctor Vologin to arrive, I’m afraid. Now someone get me Rosemary on the phone.”

“Here you are, sir.”

“Excellent.”

It was ten minutes to noon when Dmitri arrived at the address on the card, lugging a case full of carefully packed vials and little else aside from the clothing on his back. Perhaps Mr. Carter would allow him to go back to his apartment and pack before they left the country. He strode up to the door and knocked on it briskly, and it was opened by a man who had the look of a low-life thug of some sort, albeit one in a very nice suit. The man looked Dmitri up and down, but didn’t ask who he was; he simply stepped to one side and ushered Dmitri in to the house and down a hall to a sitting room of sorts, where Mr. Carter appeared to be holding court with a handful more men who were all just as brawny and just as well-dressed as the one who had let Dmitri in. A large, black bag occupied one corner of the room, obviously full of… something. Dmitri wasn’t sure he wanted to know what.

As Dmitri stepped in to the room, Mr. Carter held up one finger, an indication to wait. “No, something distinctive, I think. We want to draw the eye away from his other recognizable features.” Mr. Carter paused for a moment, listening to the person on the other end of the line. “Fantastic. I know I can leave it all safely in your capable hands, Rosemary.” He hung up and looked up at Dmitri. “Well. Doctor Vologin. I was starting to wonder if you were going to be joining us.

“Well. I am here now,” Dmitri said, holding up the case he was carrying. “And here is my virus.”

“So very glad to hear it.” Mr. Carter stood and crossed the room to stand in front of Dmitri, nodding at one of the goons as he did. Dmitri found himself divested of the hard case containing the samples of Koschei Bessmertnyy, and instead was forced to meet Mr. Carter’s bright blue eyes, which seemed to bore uncomfortably into him. “Do you have a spare pair?”

Dmitri blinked, confused. “Spare… pair?”

“Of glasses,” Mr. Carter said, in the sort of tone Dmitri was used to hearing adults use on not-too-bright toddlers.

“No…?”

“A pity. Ah, well, we’ve got that covered on the other end. You’ll just have to make do until then.” And with that, Mr. Carter snatched the glasses off Dmitri’s face and handed them off to another one of the goons, who crossed the room to the big black bag. Dmitri made an abortive attempt to snatch the glasses back, and was immediately restrained by another of the goons.

“What is this?” he asked angrily.

“We don’t want people asking any uncomfortable questions, Doctor,” said Mr. Carter, calmly. “So we’ve got just a little more work to do before we leave the country.”

Two sleek black cars had appeared outside the house after Dmitri had arrived, and he was bundled into one of them by a pair of the goons. The black bag disappeared into the back of the car, and though he could not see well enough to be certain, Dmitri thought that Mr. Carter must have gotten into the back of the other car; at the very least, he wasn’t in the same car as Dmitri.

Dmitri looked up at the goon who had clambered into the seat next to him. “Do you speak Russian?” The goon did not answer, so Dmitri continued in English. “What is happening? Can you tell me?”

The goon still did not answer. He did not even look Dmitri’s way. Dmitri was starting to wonder if the man was deaf when the car pulled up outside of a building that, even without his glasses, Dmitri immediately recognized as the one that contained his lab. “What-?”

Before he could finish his question, a bag was pulled over his head, strings tightening around his neck. Dmitri was hustled out of the car by the goon, up a set of stairs that he only did not stumble on because he knew them so well, after working in this building for five years. He heard the sobbing of the lab tech who had been panicking earlier in the day, heard the goon say “Get out of here, before we do to you what we are going to do to him,” in fluent, unaccented Russian.

“I demand to know what is happening!” yelled Dmitri in Russian, bracing his feet against the ground. He was pulled off his feet by the goon escorting him, tugged along, and the sound of the lab tech’s sobbing fading into the background. Still, there was no answer. Oh, blyad, was this a set-up? Catch him attempting to defect, use that as an excuse to rid themselves of him entirely?

He was forced to his knees by the goon, and let out an angry, wordless shout at the indignity. And then, very near his head, there was the sound of a gunshot, and the thump of a body. Had that been Kostya? Was he next?

But no, he was urged back to his feet, the hood was whipped off, revealing the body of a man on the floor who was very similar in build to Dmitri himself, wearing a set of clothing very much like the outfit Dmitri was wearing. As to whether there were any facial similarities, Dmitri could not judge. The man had very little face left, merely a bloody hole full of shattered bone and the shattered pieces of what Dmitri assumed must be his own glasses.

Dmitri felt a little bit ill, but before he could react, he was whisked off down the back stairs of the building and into the sleek black car that was waiting there for him, with Mr. Carter inside.

“Could have warned me,” said Dmitri in a careful, measured tone, certain that if he let go of what tenuous control he currently had over his emotions, he might start screaming.

“Ah, but your acting wouldn’t have been nearly as good,” said Mr. Carter, flippantly. He made a casual gesture towards the driver, and the car started moving. Dmitri couldn’t tell what direction they were moving in—his attempts to orient himself as they drove were hindered by the fact that he could barely see beyond the contents of the car, and even Mr. Carter’s features were indistinct and blurry unless Dmitri leaned in far, far closer than he felt comfortable being to this unpredictable man—but even so, he got the impression that they were not heading towards a public airstrip of any sort.

Before they got too far along, there was a concussive boom; Dmitri looked out the back window and, to his shock, saw a tower of flame behind the car. It died down quickly, but Mr. Carter’s lack of concern left Dmitri certain that his lab was in the center of that conflagration.

He hoped the goons had taken the time to empty the building before setting it ablaze.

He suspected, given what seemed to be the relatively ruthless nature of the man in the car with him, that they had not.

A half-hour drive later, and Dmitri’s suspicions about their destination were confirmed; they pulled into what looked like a mostly-disused airstrip. A single, powerful-looking passenger plane was parked there, and a pair of waiting attendants opened Carter and Dmitri’s doors, then unloaded the remaining contents of the car.

“Come on aboard,” said Mr. Carter. Dmitri followed, feeling blank and hollow. Sometime during the drive to the air strip, he felt as if he’d come unmoored from the world, as if the ground were no longer solid beneath his feet. The fact that he could not see the ground very well without his glasses only exacerbated this condition.

Once aboard the plane, Mr. Carter opened the door to a compartment. It was cozy, comfortable; several plush seats, a table, what looked like a bed. “Do try to get some rest, Doctor Vologin. One of my assistants will be in here with some paperwork for you once we’ve taken off.”

Dmitri found that speech was beyond him at this point; the shock of the past few hours was finally making itself felt, and once Carter left him, he barely managed to stumble over to one of the seats and collapsed into it, trembling.

He did not know if he had chosen the correct path.

But there was no going back now.

Once the plane reached cruising altitude, one of the two attendants came in with a folder full of assorted paperwork; an American passport, a driver’s license, a contract, among other things. The attendant took him through the stack of papers, pointing out where he needed to sign and initial. Dmitri did his best to read the entire thing, but the attendant was rushing him through it—on purpose, Dmitri suspected—but even if he hadn’t been, well, without his glasses, trying to read the entire thing would have been an exercise that only resulted in a headache. He simply hoped that he would get a copy for himself once everything was signed, and that the attendant’s summary was accurate.

Though truth be told, as long as Dmitri had access to the lab, to the financial support, to the staff that Mr. Carter had promised, he did not much care about the finer details of the agreement. All he really wanted was to be left alone to get on with his work, and it seemed that Mr. Carter was willing to let him do that.

After the contract was signed, the attendant went briefly over the remaining paperwork, offered Dmitri a drink or something to eat, and, when he refused, suggested he get some sleep and left the compartment for the time being.

Dmitri tested the bed. It was obscenely comfortable, but when he tried to lay down and relax, when he shut his eyes, the only thing he could see was the body of the man who looked like him, the shattered face that might have been his.

So instead, he sat back down at the table and squinted his way through the rest of the paperwork, taking in what information he could retain. His new alias—Karl Kelley, apparently—the name of the manager who would be overseeing his lab, the names of the techs who would be working under him—Rosemary Epps, Aditi Korai, Andrew Lin—but no, names had never been his strong suit, and he’d found himself uncertain of what they’d been bare minutes after he moved on to the next page. He flipped back to check the names again, but decided he would be able to learn them better once he had faces to go with them.

Goodness knows how long it was going to take until his alias sat on him as well as his birth name.

His head was starting to hurt. He tried the bed once more, and again, the image of the corpse of the man who had looked like him flashed behind his eyes. So instead, he paced.

He did not know how long it was—an hour? Perhaps two?— when the attendant checked on him again. Dmitri took the man’s offer of food and drink this time, and was brought a rather splendid dinner and a coffee.

And then… he paced. He tried, oh, he tried to sleep. Laying on the bed, sitting up on one of the plush seats, even laying flat on the ground, but every time, the panic set in once more.

He wondered if he would ever be able to sleep again without seeing that image in his mind.


	5. Rosemary and Adriane have a conversation about Russian Literature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No smut.

January 18th, 1989

"Adriane, mein Herz, mein Schatz, mein Liebchen."

Adriane Dolmetsch, the Black Archivist, looked up to find Rosemary Epps leaning against the doorframe of Adriane's office and smiling a broad smile, and she raised an eyebrow an infinitesimally small amount in response. "What do you want, Rosmarin?"

Rosemary's smile grew broader. "Who says I want something? Maybe I'm just here for the pleasure of your company."

Adriane's eyebrow inched a little further skyward at that. "You only call me your treasure when you want something. So. What is it?"

Rosemary left the door and plopped herself down in one of the deliberately uncomfortable chairs Adriane kept in her public office for visitors. They were meant to dissuade people from lingering—that is, if Adriane's reputation and personality didn't send them off quickly—but that had never quite managed to dissuade Rosemary from trying to be friendly.

When she wasn't being a pain in the ass, that was.

Rosemary grinned. “You're saying I have a tell? How very sloppy of me.”

“Rosmarin,” said Adriane in her “get to the damn point already” voice.

"The Vologin project is a go," Rosemary said, her voice elated. "Months of work and research and very, very difficult acquisitions—you wouldn't believe some of the instruments his old lab had, completely out-of-date—"

"No, I would not believe," murmured Adriane, an unnecessary comment, since Rosemary was perfectly aware that Adriane did not share her passion for vintage lab equipment in the slightest.

"—but finally, FINALLY, the offer has been made, and they’re on a plane now, and I'll have a full lab again sometime tomorrow.”

"I imagine it will take some time to recover from jet lag," said Adriane dryly.

Rosemary waved a dismissive hand through the air. "Well, yes, I suppose we can give him a day or so until he needs to be fully operational."

"Hm." Adriane's eyebrow lowered finally, and she glared across her desk at Rosemary. "And so you are merely here to waste my time?"

Rosemary sat bolt upright, excited. "Oh, no! Thank you for reminding me." She grinned at Adriane again, and Adriane felt the corners of her mouth twitch upward in an involuntary response. "Carter finally found out what Vologin's been calling the retrovirus, but I think I'm not getting a reference somewhere. Russian literature's not my strong suit. You know anything about someone named, oh, what was it. Koschei Bessmertnyy?"

Both of Adriane's eyebrows shot up at that. "Remind me, what is this retrovirus supposed to do again?"

"I believe he's aiming for something that will induce general regenerative abilities. Increased strength, increased resistance to other maladies, that sort of thing." Rosemary scoffed. "Honestly, sounds to me like he's trying to cure the human condition, but it's not that easy to defeat death."

Adriane let out a muffled scream of laughter, then clapped her hand over her mouth. Rosemary stared at her in shock, and Adriane gestured desperately at the door. Rosemary stood and shut it, leaning against it and looking at Adriane with an expression rather close to terror as Adriane doubled over her desk, laughing.

After a few moments, she straightened up and wiped the tears from her eyes with the backs of the cotton gloves she was wearing. Must remember to replace them, she reminded herself.

Rosemary cautiously approached the desk and sat down again, still examining Adriane with concern. Adriane smiled, and Rosemary jumped in her seat. "Good lord," muttered Rosemary. "Do I want to know what caused that reaction?"

"It is simply that we should have made his new alias some variant of Marya Morevna," said Adriane, still amused.

"Okay, yes, I do need to know. Explain, Adriane."

Adriane rested her elbows on her desk and interlaced her fingers, looking over them at Rosemary. "Koschei Bessmertnyy, also known as Koschei the Deathless, is an immortal sorcerer who removed his death from his body and hid it inside a needle, which is inside an egg, which is inside a duck, which is inside a hare, which is inside an iron chest, which is buried under an oak tree on a far-off island. For as long as his death remains safe, he cannot be killed."

Rosemary raised an eyebrow. "I see. I think I read that fairytale when I was a child; it's in one of the Lang books, isn't it?"

"I would not know."

Rosemary frowned, thinking. "And Marya Morevna... oh. OH. I remember. Oh, we really should have named him after her, shouldn't we." Rosemary let out an amused chortle of laughter and grinned her infectious grin at Adriane. "Well, he'll no doubt need a new alias at some point. Most of the folks who work with human subjects do. Let's say the two of us sit down right now and come up with something good, hm?"

"I have a half hour I can spare," Adriane said, unable to resist grinning back.


	6. This Would Be a Meet-Cute But It’s More Like A Meet-Depression

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No smut. Some comforting.

January 19th, 1989

“We’re here, Doctor.”

Dmitri Vologin blinked himself awake, eyes bleary from the nap he’d just taken during the car ride from the landing strip, short as it was, eyesight blurry from lack of glasses. Mr. Carter had already turned away from Dmitri to his window, which he’d rolled down, and had started talking to the indistinct shape of the person outside.

“Rosemary. How good of you to meet us.”

The indistinct shape responded in a cheerful but sarcastic female voice. “It is my job, sir.”

“Still. You could have left this to your assistant.”

The driver of the car had opened the door next to Dmitri at that point, and was pointedly staring at him, so Dmitri missed what came next as he clambered out of the car and stood unsteadily, clutching the pile of paperwork and identification that he’d been given on the plane to his chest. And then the driver closed the car door, slid back into his own seat, and drove off, and he watched it go, feeling disoriented and exhausted and completely lost.

He looked down at the papers he was holding, frowning. They, and the clothing on his back, were quite literally all he owned in the world at the moment.

The shape who had been talking to Mr. Carter through his window crossed to his side, resolving into a short, wide, dark-skinned woman, with very tall hair and a very teal suit. Details were beyond him without his glasses, but he could tell that she was smiling at him. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Kelley,” she said, holding a hand out to him, with something clasped in it. “My name is Rosemary Epps, and I’ll be managing your lab. You can just call me Rosemary, though, everyone does.”

“Er. And you can call me Dmitri—no. What was the name?” He shuffled the papers in his arm around, pulling out a passport and squinting nearsightedly at it. “Karl, apparently.”

The woman—Rosemary, he reminded himself—laughed at that, and waved the contents of her hand at him. “Here. This will help.”

He reached out and took the object from her, and it turned out to be a hard case, the sort glasses came in, which he proved incapable of opening one handed. Rosemary tsked, and took it back from him, opening it and holding up a pair of thick, black plastic frames, very different from the round wire-rimmed ones he was used to.

“May I?” she asked, and he nodded, too tired to do anything else. She folded the arms of the glasses out, carefully reaching up to settle them on his face, smoothing the arms over his ears, tweaking them to lay straight.

In front of him, her face resolved to that of middle-aged black woman, well made-up, hair just as tall now that it was in focus as his first blurry impression of it. She had to be very short, he thought; a glance down at her feet revealed heels of an inch or two, but even with them the top of her head just barely reached his nose, and he was not a tall man.

He suspected her shoulders, on the other hand, were a good few inches wider than his own, even under the shoulder pads of her expertly tailored teal dress-suit. The overall impression she gave was one of… abundance, he forced himself to think, setting several rather more rude descriptions aside.

She gave his glasses a final tweak, and smiled, a bright, startling flash of teeth that lit her entire face up, and he almost stopped breathing for a moment at the warmth of it. “There. That’s better. Would you like to see your apartment?”

Dmitri nodded, and the woman put a hand on his shoulder and turned him around gently to face the apartment building behind them. “Lucky you, you’ll be right next to me,” she said, grinning up at him and herding him efficiently through the front door, which she opened with a keycard.

He frowned at the keycard. “Do I have one of those?”

The woman—blyad, he’d already forgotten her name—grinned up at him again. “Oh, yes. It should be with your paperwork.” She led him to a door one from the end of the hall, and pulled a ring of keys out of her pocket, unlocking the door and then dangling the keys off her index finger in Dmitri’s direction. “And these are yours as well,” she said, dropping them into his open hand when he held it out. “Now, I rather suspect you’d like to sleep the clock around just about now; Mr. Carter tells me you didn’t get much rest on the plane. But if you get hungry, there’s food in the fridge and more supplies in the pantry, and if you need anything, I’ll be just down the hall for the rest of the night, and my office number is on the pad right next to the phone, all right?”

Dmitri nodded. “When… what do I do next?”

The woman cocked her head to one side, considering him. “I’ll pop in tomorrow morning and see how well you’ve recovered from the flight first, I think. We’ll decide how quickly to integrate you based on that.”

Dmitri nodded again. It seemed to be the only response he could manage at the moment.

The woman reached out and took the keys back, took the pile of papers from his hands, tucking them against her chest. With her free hand, she grasped him by the elbow, guiding him down the entrance hall to a small living room. She set the papers and keys down on a side table in the living room and opened a door, off the living room, revealing a bedroom. “Doors in the entrance hall are kitchen and bathroom, bathroom on the same side as this. Now sleep, Dr. Kelley. You have a lot of work ahead of you, and you can’t do it if you’re exhausted.”

“Told you to call me Dmitri,” he mumbled, staring blankly at the bed. It had been a very, very long day, the length of two normal days, and it had started with Mr. Carter and his subordinates faking Dmitri Vologin’s death, and it seemed that the shock of that particular maneuver of Mr. Carter’s was finally getting to him, along with the exhaustion of being too tense to sleep during the entire plane ride from Russia.

“No, you told me to call you Karl, but I prefer not to.” The woman sighed, and took his elbow again, pulling him through to the bedroom, turning him, making him sit and then lay down on the bed. He lay there, staring up at the ceiling, hardly registering it as she pulled his shoes off, then came and took his glasses, folding them back up and placing them and the hard case they’d come in on the side table. “Sleep,” she said, looking down at him, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’ll all sort itself out in your brain in the morning, I promise.”

He sighed, and shut his eyes, and slept.

Rosemary paused, staring down at Karl Kelley as he immediately dropped off to sleep, and hoping for his sake—and for the sake of the dark circles under his eyes—that he’d stay that way for quite some time. 

“Ah, well, here’s your new pet, then,“ Carter had said earlier in response to her insistence that Doctor Kelley was her responsibility now, and didn’t she always take care of her responsibilities? "See that he’s fed and watered,” he had continued, glancing over his shoulder as Vologin had clambered, awkward and one-armed given the stack of paperwork he had clutched to his chest like it was a lifeline, out of the car. “And a nap wouldn’t go amiss. My men say he didn’t sleep a wink aboard the plane.” And then, with a last nonchalant wave in her direction, Carter had rolled up the window and then sent the driver on his way, leaving Dmitri Vologin—now sporting the rather awful alias of Karl Kelley, god help the man—standing there, looking like a rather lost and completely exhausted duckling. 

Well, if ducklings looked like middle-aged Russian scientists with squints and dark circles under their eyes and absolutely no hair visible anywhere, that is.

The squint, at least, had corrected itself when she’d settled the glasses on his face, taking an exaggerated amount of time and care with the procedure because the cautious once-over he’d given her as soon as he could see her well had been so amusing to watch from close-up. 

It didn’t hurt that those eyes of his turned out to be a cold, light blue under that squint, and she always did like a nice pair of blue eyes, even if they were attached to an odd-looking package like Vologin. 

Though perhaps not entirely odd-looking, Rosemary reassessed as she stared down at his exhausted, sleeping face. Those cheekbones were rather nice. 

She shook her head, clearing it. She shouldn’t be thinking about one of her scientists in terms of whether he was attractive or not, she should be thinking in terms of what would make him most effective, and right now that was sleep, probably followed by a solid meal and a walk and even more sleep. 

Rosemary shook her head again, this time amused; for all it was just a bit demeaning, Carter’s pet analogy wasn’t far off. 

Before she left Dr. Kelley’s apartment, Rosemary swung by the kitchen, locating bottles of water and Gatorade—the poor man was no doubt dehydrated as well as exhausted—and the stash of assorted granola bars her assistant, Charles, had said he’d made sure were on hand. They wouldn’t be as good as a real meal, Rosemary reflected, sneaking back into the bedroom to leave a couple of them on Kelley’s bedside table, along with the bottles, but they’d tide him over if he woke up starving in the middle of the night.

As a last touch, she flipped on a nightlight she’d plugged in to the wall near his bed. He’d seemed awfully lost, and while it was still light outside, and while she knew from her own bedroom that a good amount of light filtered in from the lights of the parking lot outside at night, he would no doubt be disoriented when he woke and a little extra light never went amiss when searching for a sense of place.

Rosemary had had one of her labs sitting empty for nearly nine months, waiting for them to find someone to replace Dr. Messer, who had left for a two year rotation and who would most likely wind up transferring to one of the satellite locations back here on Earth when she returned. Provided her research on the subjects that were up there for disciplinary purposes panned out, that was. Goddard’s main campus had everything you could ever want for research purposes, but it was poorly suited for the mass production of pharmaceuticals, and Gertraud would want to be close by the manufactory for tests back here on earth. Dr. Kelley filled that gap, bringing Rosemary back to full capacity, giving her a new project to concentrate on, a new scientist to discover the strengths and weaknesses of. 

And a good thing he did bring her back to full capacity; she’d been getting a little bored, with just Pryce and her four other team members to manage, their routines so set for the most part that she could run their labs like clockwork, even with the occasional irrational-seeming last-minute demands Pryce sent her way from time to time. After all, Rosemary had learned to account for the fact that such demands were going to happen on a regular—and occasionally irregular—basis, and even the strangest of them no longer broke her stride. The proudest day of Rosemary’s life had been when she’d managed to figure out what Pryce would need next before Pryce herself had known. It had only happened once, a much lower hit rate than she had with the rest of her team, but then, Pryce had her fingers in a lot of pies, many of which Rosemary only had a passing familiarity with. 

Rosemary looked down at Dr. Kelley one last time, wondering if she ought to empty his pockets or unbutton his slacks and deciding a little regretfully that, even for her, that was a bridge too far when it came to a man she’d just met. And then she turned and left the room and the apartment, locking it behind her with the spare set of keys she had on loan from the super. 

That was going to be a problem, she admitted to herself later that evening. She could only hope that Dr. Kelley would be an absolute terror to work with once he’d recovered a little and would give her a disgust of him. 

Because for all the lack of hair made him look a little odd, she’d realized as she’d watched him sleep that she was uncomfortably attracted to the man.


	7. Ah, Yes, a Naked Bald Russian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No smut, some nudity, lots of Rosemary and Hilbert being weirdly attracted to someone they just met.

January 20th, 1989

Dmitri woke up to a mostly dark room, still feeling a bit groggy. The sleep had been necessary, yes, but it also meant his body had come down off the adrenaline high it had been riding, and the aftereffects of that were almost as bad as a hangover. He squinted around the room he was in; not his bedroom, of course not his bedroom, but a bedroom, and one that perhaps in time he’d grow to think of as his.

He scooped the glasses up off the bedside table and the room took form, the dark shapes of furniture illuminated by the dim glow coming through the window and the slightly brighter glow of—was that a night light? He sat up further in the bed and peered around the bedside table. Yes, it was.

And on the bedside table… he switched on the lamp sitting there, and stared down at two bottles, one full of water and one full of some appallingly blue liquid, and a small pile of what looked like they might be candy bars. He picked one up and frowned at it. “Chewy chocolate chip granola bar?” he read off the label. “Huh.”

His voice was raspy, so he broke into the water bottle, draining it, and then risking the blue drink. It was peculiar, but at least he was no longer thirsty, though now his bladder made him aware that he ought to discover the toilet.

Standing up was a production. He was stiff and sore and his clothing had dug into him in odd places as he slept.

After taking care of his bladder, he washed up perfunctorily in the sink. He wanted to shower, but the thought of getting dressed afterwards in the clothing he’d been wearing for the past—how long? 48 hours? Longer?—did not appeal. But they’d taken care to have glasses for him, so perhaps…

Half an hour later, he’d eaten two of the granola bars (and hadn’t yet managed to convince himself that they weren’t candy bars) and had a surprisingly large wardrobe spread out over most of the bed. Perhaps just large by his standards; he’d been capable of stuffing every piece of clothing he owned into a single duffle bag for years. They’d clearly noticed his preference for mock turtlenecks over collared shirts, and even more disturbingly, his preference for boxers over briefs.

He wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that, but the allure of a clean body and clean clothing was too strong for him to feel too unsettled by it, so he headed towards the bathroom and pulled a towel out of a cabinet he’d scoped out earlier and turned on the shower.

The water was hot, well and truly hot, not the tepid temperature he’d become so used to from his apartment back in Russia. The soap was not the caustic, sharp-scented block he was used to; it was smooth and lathered well, and left him smelling rather like… was that lavender?

After he was clean, after he’d scrubbed every bit of himself that he could, he lingered in the shower a bit longer, enjoying the heat, letting the water pound the lingering stress of the past few days out of his body.

He had dried off and had just opened the bathroom door, leaving the towel on one of the hooks near the shower, when the front door of his apartment swung open, revealing the round little black woman who had shown him to his apartment. She was backing in through his front door, pulling a set of keys out of the lock with one hand and holding a plastic bag in the other, and called out “Doctor Kelley, are you awake?” in a quiet voice as she started to turn.

Dmitri froze like a deer in headlights.

Rosemary hadn’t expected a response; Dr. Kelley’s apartment was still mostly dark, and he’d seemed tired enough last night that she expected him to sleep for a lot longer than fifteen hours.

And she definitely hadn’t expected to turn around to find him standing in the open doorway of the bathroom, stark naked and staring wide-eyed at her.

She didn’t really know how to react at first; it was still quite early, and she’d only had one cup of coffee, and her brain really didn’t quite get going until she’d downed the second cup, so instead of doing the sensible thing and leaving the apartment, she stared at him.

And then she stared at him more, suddenly just a little bit breathless.

And then, finally, she came to her senses, dropping the plastic bag and its contents with a yelp, and somehow making it back out into the hallway, keeping up a constant babble of “I’m-so-sorry-I’ll-be-back-later-so-so-sorry-please-forgive-me.”

Her apartment door and the second cup of coffee she obviously was in desperate need of were only a few feet away, but instead of making her way there, she let herself sag against the wall in the hallway for a few long moments, trying very hard to get her breath back.

Oh, she thought, this is really going to be a problem.

It took the door slamming behind the short woman for Dmitri’s brain and body to start working again. He wished he'd had the presence of mind to dive back into the bathroom, to grab his towel; from what the woman had said when she'd met him, they'd be working closely together, and he suspected giving his new lab manager a full-frontal look at his naked body was not the first impression he wanted to be making. He wasn't entirely certain how he would manage to be professional with her, knowing she'd seen him naked, and she…

Well, the wide-eyed once-over she'd given him had been thorough, to say the least, though her expression had been so shocked he hadn't been able to tell whether her reaction to him was positive or not.

Not that he cared whether it was positive. In fact, he'd much prefer it to be the opposite. Sexual tension always made a workplace awkward.

Which was why he was not going to think about how extremely well-tailored that suit of hers was, or how nice the curve of her lower back had looked in it as she'd backed into his apartment. He’d simply been alone for too long, that was all. Blyad, he didn't even normally notice women, and especially not ones so blatantly feminine. Or not sexually, in any case.

He wondered for a moment if Goddard would see to fulfilling all of his physical needs, if he asked, then shook his head. Ridiculous. He wouldn't have time for such things, anyway. Not if he wanted to make progress on his work.

He had started to feel the pressure of time, the past few years. He'd started to feel… old. Tired. He knew, logically, that he was still in his prime, that he had another twenty, thirty, forty years in him, but he'd been working towards the discovery of something like the Koschei Bessmertney Virus for more than half his life. And now that he had it in hand, now that the path was laid out before him, he was impatient, and terrified that he would not have enough time.

So no, there was no time, no space for physical needs in this new life of his. He needed to remember that, needed to remain hard in spite of this newfound luxury he found himself living in. Because failure was not an option.

He'd never forgive himself if he failed.

He realized suddenly that he'd been standing in the entrance hall, still stark naked, staring blankly at the plastic bag the woman had dropped on the floor. Blyad, what was her name? Perhaps it was on his paperwork somewhere. But no, first, clothing, so that he could greet her like a civilized person when she came back. If she came back. He wouldn't blame her if she'd decided she couldn't possibly work with him, after what had just happened. If she decided it would be too awkward.

He got dressed quickly and returned to the entrance hall to pick up the plastic bag and examine its contents. It has a styrofoam container with a post-it note on top, with “Here's breakfast. Plates in the cupboard over the sink to reheat!” written in sprawling cursive. He opened the container cautiously and found pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, something he suspected was heavily spiced potatoes, all still warm, so very American a breakfast that it made him smile a bit.

His stomach growled at the smell, and he went into the kitchen, found a fork in one of the drawers, and ate the lot.

He was finishing off a last bit of pancake when there was a hesitant knock at his front door, so he chewed and swallowed hastily as he went to answer it.

He'd expected that it would awkward to be back face-to face with this woman, but she smiled up at him and said “I've returned the spare keys to the building manager now that you're up and about!” in a cheerful, unaffected voice, and he found himself smiling back, any tension he might have felt melting away in the face of her open, friendly expression. “Have you eaten?” she continued, and at his nod, she said “Good. I know it's early, but would you like a tour of the lab complex?”

“Er, yes. That would be nice. I will put on shoes.” He left the door ajar and padded down the hall to the bedroom door.

“Don't forget to grab your keys and find your keycard!” the woman called after him from the open doorway, obviously unwilling to set foot in his apartment again after the debacle of earlier this morning. He waved a hand over his shoulder in acknowledgment, and detoured to the living room to scoop the keys off the small table she'd left them on and to shuffle through the paperwork for his keycard. He found it adhered to a list of locations and instructions, and folded the entire thing up and stuck it in his pocket for now, doing a quick once-over of the remaining paperwork in the hope that the name of the woman standing at his door would jump out at him from among the information those papers contained.

“Haven't got all day, Dr.Kelley!” came the woman’s voice from the door. Despite the fact that her tone was still cheerful, something about the way she'd said it made him hop back into action immediately, diving through the door of his bedroom and grabbing his shoes, stuffing the laces down the sides instead of bothering to tie them.

He came back out of the bedroom and her eyes went immediately to his shoes, one of her eyebrows quirking up in amusement.“We do, however, have enough time for you to tie your shoes, Dr.Kelley.”

“Right. Yes.” Dmitri sat on the couch, feeling rather… well, rather like a gauche schoolboy, truth be told. For all the woman’s tone was kind, cheerful, amused even, something in her voice went straight to the hindbrain and demanded compliance in a way that reminded him of some of the strictest teachers he'd had as a child.

This woman was going to be a terror to work with.

Dmitri found himself strangely cheered by the prospect.

Rosemary watched Dr.Kelley for a brief moment, glad she could only see half of him from her post by his door. It stopped her from being able to ogle him quite as blatantly as she wanted to.

Ogling him would only lead to trouble, she knew, but the temptation was there all the same.

Instead, she shifted her gaze to the furthest corner of his apartment ceiling that she could see and took a few deep, calming breaths, centering herself. It was one thing if she wanted to ogle him. It would be another thing entirely if she did ogle him, if he realized exactly how interesting she found him, especially now that she knew what was under his clothing.

Not that it would matter; up until the past few years, he'd been to see female prostitutes on a regular basis, apparently, but aside from that he'd avoided women entirely, and the person who'd done his report had suspected the prostitutes were simply cover for being gay.

Rosemary wished Al had done the report, suddenly. Al would have found a way to be certain on that score. But Russia wasn't a very safe place for Al any more, and they'd had to rely on other, somewhat less thorough researchers.

Dr.Kelley appeared in her field of vision suddenly, blotting out the corner. Rosemary smiled automatically up at him, and he responded with a hesitant smile of his own.

“Ready to go, Dr.Kelley?”

“Yes, er, Miss…?” Dr.Kelley trailed off, looking hopefully at her.

Rosemary laughed. “Yesterday was a very long day, wasn't it? It's Rosemary Epps.”

“Miss Epps.” They stepped out of his apartment and he jangled the keys in her direction. “Locking up necessary?”

“I'd say so, yes. The campus is pretty safe, but, well, that doesn't stop people from being snoops if they find an unlocked door,” Rosemary said firmly. “And please, call me Rosemary. All of my scientists do.”

Dr. Kelley glanced over his shoulder at her as he finished locking up. “Well then, you must call me Dmitri.” He pulled the keys out of the lock and twirled the ring on his finger briefly before depositing them in his pocket.

Rosemary sighed. “Your name is Karl now, Dr.Kelley. In case you've forgotten, Dmitri Vologin is dead.”

He went stiff and distant at her side for a moment as they walked down the interior hallway of the apartment. She tapped on the door to the basement as they passed. “Laundry is downstairs. It's free, but we can also arrange for a laundry service if you need it.”

Dr. Kelley nodded, and then said “You should call me Karl, then.”

Rosemary grinned up at him as they left the front door of the apartment complex. “Not a chance, Dr.Kelley. But you should get used to calling yourself Karl. I hear it helps the name stick.”

“Very well, then I will call you Miss Epps,” said Dr.Kelley, looking around with interest as they crossed the apartment parking lot and started down a path towards the lab complex. “Is there anywhere we could get coffee?”

Rosemary let out an exasperated sigh. “Calling me Miss Epps will make you stand out, and you already stand out enough. We had to shift the last Russian who came through here off to a satellite research facility where he's the only scientist. That won't be an option for you. Carter wants to keep your work close at hand.”

“Mm. Coffee?”

Rosemary sighed again, and set off down a side path. “This way to the cafeteria.”

After they acquired lukewarm cups of coffee in what seemed to be an otherwise decent cafeteria, the fat little lab manager lead Dmitri off to a large, gleaming lab complex. He’d forgotten her name yet again on the walk to the cafeteria, and was hoping that they’d run into someone who would greet her and prompt his memory. He was still suffering from jet lag, and while the coffee was helping a little bit, the breakfast that the woman had left for him was sitting heavy in his stomach, making him drowsy. Unfortunately, while he heard murmurs from elsewhere in the building, they didn’t encounter anyone on the trip to the fourth floor.

“This way!” the lab manager said, shooing him down a hall and opening a door with ‘Dr. Kelley’ written on it. “Come on in to your new base of operations.”

Dmitri blinked and looked around the lab, just a little bit startled. Mr. Carter had told him that the lab they had waiting for him was top of the line, but this… he didn’t even know what some of the machines in this room did.

“This is…” he trailed off, not certain what words he was looking for.

“Fantastic, isn’t it? Carter gave me carte blanche, and I’m afraid I went a bit overboard.”

“Perhaps a bit overwhelming,” Dmitri admitted.

“Ah. Yes. I’ve seen photos of your old lab. Well…” the lab manager went across the room to a desk at the back and started opening drawers. “Manuals, here. And your lab techs have training in using most of the equipment in here, so they can give you a hand if you need it.” She paused and bit her lip, a brief nervous movement that caught his eye. “So do I, if their knowledge ever falls short.”

Dmitri nodded. “Thank you.”

She smiled one of her warm, brilliant smiles up at him and shut the drawers again. “Now, while we’re at this end of the lab… I do have a solution for feeling overwhelmed. Most of the equipment in here is state of the art, cutting edge sort of stuff, but it’s also true that sometimes a familiar tool can be a more efficient method of advancing research than a powerful one.” The short woman pulled open a door at the back of the large, well-equipped lab. “So here I’ve done my best to replicate your old lab, based on the intel our field researchers were able to get to me.” She gave him an apologetic look. “I’m afraid they didn’t quite get me all the model numbers, so I’ve had to do my best based on the photographs.”

Dmitri—no, Karl, he was Karl now, and like the woman who was showing him around had said, the more often he thought of himself by that name the sooner it would stick—looked around the small side lab, the sense of displacement, of coming unstuck from the world that he’d felt since being whisked off by Mr. Carter only increasing. As far as he could tell, it was an exact replica of his lab back in Russia, from the poky size of the room to the assortment of mostly old and mediocre equipment contained within. “You people certainly do not leave anything to chance,” he muttered.

The lab manager’s expression switched from apologetic to pleased in an instant, another of those blinding smiles overtaking her face. “I’m so glad you like it.”

“Like… is perhaps not be the word I would use.”

She laughed. “Well, no, it’s terrible, isn’t it? Such a letdown after the main lab. I can’t think how you ever got anything done in here. But I promise you, the nostalgia factor has been very helpful for more than a few of our researchers, so I wanted to make sure you had the option as well.” She chivvied him back out into the main lab and shut the door on the dreary sight of his past.

At her brutal but honest assessment, Dmitri—no, Karl, he reminded himself again—felt a sudden, irrational surge of fondness for his old lab. The woman next to him laughed again, and he looked down at her quizzically.

“I just saw you mentally resolve to do all your best work in there, just to spite me,” she offered up as an explanation. “Good. Spite’s an excellent motivator.”

Karl frowned. “You are very strange woman.”

“Yes, well, I report directly to Mr. Carter. We all of us get a little odd after a year or two of that, and I’ve been at it for nearly fourteen.”

“Mr. Carter did not look old enough to have been in his position for so long.”

“Ah, well, I meant the Head of Communications in general,” the woman said airily, waving a dismissive hand in his direction. “The person in charge changes every seven or eight years. It’s always some hardass who uses over-the-top threats to get results, and they all sort of blur together after a while.”

“I… I see. Does that mean there are more Mr. Carters out there?” Karl felt his face stretch into an expression of exaggerated terror at the thought.

The woman flashed an amused smile at him. “None that you’ll encounter, thank goodness. There is, however, Dr. Pryce…”

She showed Karl another door with a tiny office hiding behind it, more or less a closet large enough to hold a desk and a computer, keeping up a cheerful thread of narration the entire time. Karl did his best to follow her conversation and keep up his end of it, but exhaustion was making it hard to concentrate. He didn’t think she’d noticed, but once she’d shooed him back out into the hallway, she looked up at him with a concerned expression.

“Back to bed with you, I think,” she said. “We can finish the tour tomorrow. And I want you awake for your interrogation.”

Karl gave her a startled look. “Interrogation?”

The woman laughed and tucked her arm through his, guiding him down the hallway and back towards the stairs. “A terrible joke on my part. I’ve read a précis of your research, but I want to make sure I’ve got all the details down. Can’t do my job if I don’t know what you’re up to, can I?”

“I suppose not,” he said, still startled. Did this woman know about all the details of his research? Or was Mr. Carter the only person who knew that Karl needed human trials? He did not know, and remained preoccupied by these thoughts as the fat little lab manager escorted him back down the stairs and out of the lab complex.

To Karl’s relief, the woman was mostly silent on the walk back to the apartment building. She kept her remarks to landmarks on Goddard’s campus, adding, as she left him at his door, that she would bring him dinner from the cafeteria, and that there were tv dinners in the freezer if he needed them.

Karl was suddenly too exhausted to even wonder what a tv dinner consisted of. He went straight to the bedroom, just taking time to undress before crawling into the bed and falling almost immediately asleep.

His last thought was of the lab manager, wondering if the knowledge that he would need human trials one of these days would make her think less of him.


	8. An Interrogation and the Archives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not smutty, but boy is Rosemary a flirt and boy does Hilbert not know how to deal with it.

January 21st, 1989

Dmitri—Karl, he reminded himself—woke the next morning, feeling considerably less groggy. The lab manager—Rosemary Epps, he’d finally found her name on the paperwork he’d been given and had repeated it to himself until it stuck—had appeared at his door the night before with another styrofoam container full of food, this time a pasta in some sort of creamy sauce, a side of mixed vegetables, shrimp in a garlic sauce. She had held her hands up defensively when he had tried to thank her, saying “Oh, no trouble at all. You’ll be in charge of finding your own meals once you know your way around, of course, but I imagine everything is overwhelming right now, and I don’t have to go that far out of my way to swing by the cafeteria on the way back to my apartment.”

He had listened for her keys in the door next to his after he’d taken the meal and shut his own door, but instead there was the low thump of her footfalls heading back towards the door of the apartment complex, and he had filed it away as another data point about her personality. Someone who would lie for the comfort of others.

Rosemary appeared at his door around eight AM that morning, not long after he’d managed to haul himself out of bed and get himself clean and dressed. This time, she didn’t have breakfast with her; instead, she hustled him out of the apartment building and onto the sidewalk out front. “Time to see if you picked anything up on yesterday’s tour. Tell me, which way do you suppose the cafeteria is?”

Karl frowned. “This way, I think?” He pointed vaguely at a path that looked familiar.

Rosemary sighed, and reached out to nudge his arm to point at the next path over. “When you’re more yourself again, you’ll have to do some exploring,” she said. “It’s a big campus, and you’ll be better for knowing what all the buildings are. I can set up tours of some of the other buildings that you have the right clearance level for.”

“Is there not a campus map?”

“I’m afraid not. Mr. Carter would rather nothing of that sort gets out into the wider world, and that’s inevitable if we’ve got a physical object we’re handing around. Security concerns and all. But you’ll get the hang of it soon enough.”

They started down the path together, Rosemary pausing at each branch to check his memory of the direction. It was not a test he did well at, but she remained remarkably patient throughout, notwithstanding that sigh she’d let out while they were still in front of the apartment building. Once they reached the cafeteria, they got coffee and danishes, a makeshift breakfast they could carry with them. Rosemary winced as she sipped her coffee.

“They really need to stop using NesCafé,” she muttered, glaring down at her cup as they stepped back out in front of the cafeteria building. “Is a proper brewed cup of coffee too much to ask?” She gestured back at the building behind them. “There are a couple of different athletic facilities in that same building, by the way. The pool is outdoors, though; it’s usually warm enough in Florida to swim outside all year round.”

“I see,” said Karl, sipping his own coffee. It really was quite remarkably bad.

“Not that I ever really have time to use either, of course,” Rosemary added, “but I understand it’s all very nice, if exercising is your thing.”

“Mmh,” was the only comment Karl could come up with, so he took another sip of the terrible coffee.

Rosemary shot him a sidelong glance. “So. What would you like to do first? Tour of the campus, or shall I drag you back to my lair and interrogate you instead?”

Something about the way she’d said the word “lair” had Karl imagining a very different type of interrogation than the grilling about the Koschei Bessmertny virus that she had promised him yesterday. It was simply the way she looked, he thought. He suspected she’d spent her entire life fighting off men who took one look at her body and immediately started to take everything she said as a come-on.

Karl decided right then and there that he would not be one of those men. Not that a woman who looked like her would ever consider him, but it was the principle of the thing, especially as she would be managing his lab.

Whatever way she’d meant it, he thought that perhaps her closing the two of them up in an office somewhere was not the best course of action right at that moment. “The tour,” he said decisively. “I need a little more time for coffee to become effective.”

“Ugh, tell me about it,” Rosemary said, her complaining tone comedically exaggerated. “Well, let’s get on with it, then!”

Despite the fact that she was both remarkably short and wearing heels, Karl was hard-pressed to keep up with her as she took him on a whirlwind tour of Goddard Futuristic’s campus. “Campus store,” she said, pointing at a small concrete block of a building. “Nothing exciting, but it’ll get you the basics. Right now you’re not allowed off-campus without an escort—not that you’re considered a flight risk or anything, but you’ll have enough to adjust to, what with living in a new country and starting a new job, and we’d rather someone keep an eye on you. One of the other scientists will do, or I can have my assistant go with you; Charles lives off campus anyway, and he knows the local area better than those of us who spend all our time locked up in the lab complex.”

As she told him this, she was rushing her way down an avenue of trees, all of which looked remarkably lively considering it was mid-January. Florida really did seem like it was on an entirely different planet than St. Petersburg, than all of Russia. The avenue widened out, revealing a large gleaming building, looking rather like a cross between a skyscraper and an airplane hangar. “Most of the training for our space missions goes on in there,” Rosemary said. “Come on around; there’s a geodesic dome on the other side that I always love looking at.” She dragged him around the building to see it, and then they moved onwards.

Karl lost track of the buildings Rosemary dragged him past, each with their own design, engineering, aerospace, administration and financials, event and office space, an on-site hospital. The last was relatively close to the lab complex she’d brought him to yesterday, and she took him on a brief tour of the building, ending with a locked wing that her keycard let them into. “Human testing,” she said, after the door shut behind them.

“Ah. I was… I was wondering,” Karl said, suddenly awkward.

“I’d take you on a tour of this wing, but, well, it feels rather like we’re gawking at them, the poor unfortunate souls, and they should be allowed to keep some dignity. I just thought you’d want to know it was here,” Rosemary said, before ushering him out the door they’d just come in.

“Who has access?”

“The scientists who currently have need of that wing and a small crew of very trustworthy caretakers.” Rosemary’s voice was low, and a little sad. It was clear that she accepted the need for such testing, but he also thought that she did not exactly approve of it. And then she turned her head to flash a brilliant smile at him, and he thought that perhaps he’d just imagined the sadness. “Shall we move back to the lab complex?”

Karl nodded.

If his new lab dwarfed his old one, Karl thought that the lab complex itself could have held the building that his old lab had been in ten times over and still had space to spare. It sprawled and doubled back on itself, five stories of gleaming steel and bulletproof glass. “Not that we get many stray bullets around here,” Rosemary had added after telling him about that particular property of the windows, “but you can’t imagine the sort of stuff that gets flung through the air during hurricane season.”

Karl wondered what number of stray bullets counted as many; Rosemary’s tone had suggested that it was non-zero, which was more than a little alarming.

“In general, the higher or lower you go, the more security you’ll encounter. Anyone who can get into the complex can get to the first floor, so it’s mostly nonessentials, storage of less volatile materials, some admin space, meeting rooms, a full kitchen and a lounge, that sort of thing,” Rosemary had continued, opening a door so he could peer down a first floor hallway. “Chances are, you won’t spend much time here, but this is where most of your requisitions will come from.”

“Higher is labs, yes? But… lower?”

“Ah. We’ve got all kinds of lovely radiation-generating equipment down there, and even more lovely lead-lined rooms to keep it all in,” Rosemary said with a somewhat gleeful smile. “And of course, the sub-basement is where Dr. Pryce has her lab.”

Karl had heard of Dr. Pryce, but only by reputation, and even then only in the form of rumors, which abounded about the reclusive scientist. He wasn’t much of one to give rumors much account, but some of the ones about Pryce had been so outlandish that he was just a little bit curious.

“So, going up… my office is on the second floor, along with some of the more secure storage, the offices that belong to the other lab managers and their assistants, and open lab spaces that are used for collaboration or when the lab techs need to set something up that there isn’t space for in someone’s main lab.” Rosemary had chivvied him through a door that required her keycard to open and onto a set of stairs, continuing her explanation as they climbed to the second floor. “My group is mostly on the fifth floor; third and fourth are lower-clearance projects. Most everyone who’ll need human subjects winds up under me, though, so occasionally I drop in on the other floors.” Back out another door, and straight down a short hall to the door directly at the end of it. Rosemary pulled a set of keys out of her jacket pocket and unlocked the door, ushering him in to a large office that still managed to feel crowded, what with the corner desk, one arm of which sat between the door and the rest of the office, the computer, the guest chairs, several bookshelves and even more filing cabinets. Everything was neat and tidy, aside from the in and out trays on her desk, both of which were piled with unruly stacks of paper.

Rosemary sat him in one of the chairs and then bustled around to sit behind the desk, plopping down in her own chair and leaning down to pull a file out of one of the desk drawers. “So. The Koschei Bessmertny Virus.” Rosemary smiled, a mischievous grin. “Tell me all about how you plan to shackle death, Marya Morevna.”

Karl couldn’t help but laugh.

And then, he told her all the details of his work as she listened carefully, making the occasional note on various pages of his file in a loose, sprawling script—with her left hand, he was surprised to note. He had thought most left-handed people had it trained out of them in childhood. From time to time she prompted him with questions that reminded him he had forgotten a detail in what he had just said, but for the most part she sat there quietly, taking it all in.

And then, after he’d spilled out all the details of his research so far, she’d looked at him with raised eyebrows and a frown turning the corners of her mouth down. “Is that really everything?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…” Rosemary set her pen down, then glanced at the top sheet of the file and launched into a series of questions. At first he found them simple to answer, this thing or that, small issues he’d forgotten to bring up during his explanation of the virus, but after the first half-dozen or so he started stumbling after answers, or needed to take a minute or two to come up with one, or had no answer at all for her and the sudden realization that there were a whole host of other questions that he should have been asking himself all along.

Their terrible coffee and the danishes were a long-ago memory by the time Rosemary ran out of questions, and from the look of Dr. Kelley, he’d long ago run out of the energy necessary to answer more questions, in any case.

“Thought you said interrogation was only a joke,” Dr. Kelley said, slumping back in his chair and shutting his eyes. He rubbed his forehead with one hand, and Rosemary wondered if he had a headache. “KGB could learn a thing or two from you,” he muttered.

Rosemary laughed and fanned her suddenly warm face with sheaf of heavily-annotated papers from her desk. “Why, Dr. Kelley, what a compliment to give a girl. I’ll get a swollen head at this rate.”

He peered out from around his arm at her. “Swollen… head?”

“I’ll hold myself in higher esteem than I deserve,” she said, smiling at him.

Dr. Kelley lowered his hand and smiled back at her suddenly, or what she’d decided passed as a smile for him, a brief little upturn at the corners of his mouth and a little flash of light in eyes that opened wider for a moment, as if sharing a joke. “Ah, well, if you will not hold yourself in high esteem, allow me to do so for you. You ask remarkable questions.” He paused, as if considering. “Intelligent questions. Questions that get at core of process. I have learned things about my own research that I did not know until you started your interrogation.” He frowned then, and looked around. “You would not happen to have pad of paper and pen? I would like to write down some ideas before they disappear.”

Rosemary nodded and pulled a spare legal pad out of her desk drawer, grabbed a ballpoint from the pen holder on the desk, handing them both across the desk to Dr. Kelley. He snatched them out of her hands and started scribbling. While he worked, she checked the time, then got up from behind her desk and went down the hall to the kitchenette, grabbing protein bars and bottles of water out of one of the cabinets. Technically she shouldn’t have left Dr. Kelley unsupervised in her office, but he seemed the sort to focus in on a task and ignore everything else around himself, and it was well past lunch time. Fortification was necessary.

She checked the mini-fridge; the cafeteria always sent over sandwiches for those staff members who could never seem to make it out of the building for proper meals. But it seemed that the fridge had already been raided, so she sighed and shut it and decided she might as well make Dr. Kelley practice finding his way from the lab building to the cafeteria and get lunch for herself along the way. As she thought this, her stomach growled in protest. “Yes, I know, but it had to be done,” she said, ripping in to one of the protein bars and heading back down the hallway to her office.

Dr. Kelley didn’t look up as she entered her office, so she opened the other protein bar and set it next to his left hand, along with the water bottle she’d brought for him. To her amusement, as she sat back down at her desk and opened her own water bottle, taking a deep slug of it, he seemed to unconsciously notice the protein bar’s presence. He picked it up in his left hand and consumed it without once directly looking at it, his right hand still making notes, adding one page, two, three, four to the pages of notes he’d already scribbled down. Halfway through the fifth page he attempted to take a bite out of the protein bar’s wrapper, which Rosemary extracted from his hand and replaced with the open water bottle.

He seemed to notice where he was all of a sudden, blinking in befuddlement at the water bottle in his hand before taking a deep drink from it. “Blyad, ya goloden!” he said, apparently not entirely conscious of the fact that he was speaking Russian.

“Yes, I was thinking we ought to head back towards the cafeteria,” Rosemary said, amused.

“What time is it?” he asked, back in English.

Rosemary pulled up her sleeve to check the time. “Nearly three.”

Dr. Kelley blinked. “What day is it? I seem to have lost track.”

“January 21st,” she answered, and when he continued to look at her in a confused fashion, she added, “A Saturday.”

“I see. I apologize, if I have made you work on a day you would not normally. And for keeping you from your mid-day meal.” His expression appeared to be sincerely contrite, and, Rosemary was appalled to notice, really quite adorable.

“No such thing. It’s been quite nice to be able to rely on Charles to keep everyone off my back for anything short of an emergency. My Saturdays aren’t nearly this restful normally.”

“That was restful?” Dr. Kelley stared at her with a little frown between his nonexistent eyebrows.

“Well, I didn’t say it was meant to be restful for you,” she shot back, and there it was again, that almost-smile that lit his eyes up and made her want to smile back, not her manufactured corporate smile but a proper grin. “Shall we go investigate some lunch? We’ll come back here after for your notepad.”

“By all means,” Dr. Kelley said, standing up from the desk and stretching his arms over his head until his back popped.

“I’ll warn you now, you’re the one trailblazing,” she said as she ushered him out of her office and locked the door behind him. He groaned, and she gave in to the urge to grin up at him properly. “I’ll start you with something easy,” she said. “How do we get back to the first floor?”

Dr. Kelley sighed and made for the door at the end of the short hall that lead to the stairs, and together they made their way out of the lab building and back to the cafeteria.

The cafeteria was mostly empty when Karl and Rosemary finally arrived. He thought, though, that this time he might be able to make the return trip to the lab complex; it was just tall enough to be seen over the tops of the trees that dotted the campus grounds between it and the cafeteria, and in theory choosing the path that lead most directly that way from the options available would get him there.

Of course, he had thought he had known the way from the lab complex to the cafeteria, so when Rosemary had told him she planned to only give him a hint if he got them irrevocably lost, he’d chosen a series of pathways in what he thought was the right direction… and had landed them at a picturesque little water feature, a series of small pools that waterfalled their way down a hillside and ended in a winding stream that appeared to turn into a swamp just a little further along. He had stared at the pools in consternation and Rosemary had laughed at him—not unkindly—and had led him back three turns to where he’d made the mistake.

“Why is the campus like this?” he had asked as they’d resumed their journey to the cafeteria.

“Deterrent to corporate espionage,” Rosemary responded. “Well, in a way. It’s hard to sneak in to the buildings around here if you can’t find them. And it’s pretty. Lots of nice little outdoor scenes to stare at while you sit and think.”

“I suppose so.” He paused, then looked at her. “Is that what you do, when you are not working?”

“Oh, goodness no,” Rosemary had said to that, her tone amused and a little sardonic. “What on earth do I have to sit and think about? Such a waste of time when I could be doing things. Like the filing.”

“I thought you said you had an assistant?”

“And he’s three clearance levels below me, poor dear, though he has picked up on a thing or two he’s not supposed to know about over the years.” Rosemary smiled up at him, then jerked her head to one side in a little gesture that had him turning away from her to look ahead of them. “Take a look, Dr. Kelley. You seem to have done it this time.”

The concrete block of the cafeteria building had been there in front of them, and the conversation they’d been having petered off, both of them too intent on soothing starving stomachs to bother with small talk over their meal.

“So, back to the lab complex?” Karl asked finally, setting down the remains of the sandwich he had chosen. There had been too much mayonnaise.

Rosemary checked her watch, and then shook her head. “I think I ought to take you by the archives and introduce you to Adriane first,” she said. “The head archivist,” she added as he gave her a confused look. “You won’t be dealing with her often, but she’s the only one who can give you access to some of the high-clearance materials, and life will be easier if you start off on her good side. Not that anyone ever stays there long, but…”

“This Adriane is an ogre, then?” Karl offered up as a dry attempt at a joke. It made Rosemary laugh, at least, and that had certainly been his intention.

“Not the worst thing I’ve heard a scientist call her by far,” Rosemary said, standing and gathering up her tray. Karl followed her example as she disposed of her trash and rid herself of the tray and dishes. “Calling her an ogre to her face would probably be safer than swearing at her, which is what most of the scientists eventually resort to when they think she’s withholding something they need or redacting something she shouldn’t. But cussing’s an automatic month-long ban from the archives, which means no access to high-clearance materials at all.”

“I will keep that in mind.” Karl followed Rosemary out of the cafeteria and down another set of winding paths; the archives seemed as if they were set up to be even more inaccessible than any of the other buildings on the campus that Karl had been to. By the time they arrived, he was hopelessly lost, and he sincerely hoped that Rosemary would not expect him to find his way back to the lab complex on his own.

The front door of the small, blocky building—almost a concrete bunker of sorts, with narrow windows that were few and far between—opened onto an anteroom with a rush of humidity-controlled air, and Karl took a deep breath, glad to get air in his lungs that wasn’t thick and swampy. Rosemary lead him through another door, the air beyond even dryer, and up a set of stairs to the second floor, down a hall, and through yet another door. The loudest noises were the sounds of their shoes on linoleum and the hum of the lights, followed by the low rush of air conditioning.

The door opened, revealing a reading room. A small amount of light filtered through a few of the narrow windows along one wall, but the rest of the lighting was bright florescent bulbs, both overhead and at individual workstations that were fitted out with lamps. Small doors lined the walls, presumably leading elsewhere in the building, or to individual reading rooms.

“Adriane in, Florence?” Rosemary called softly to the young woman who was sitting at what appeared to be a reference desk of sorts, sorting carefully through papers with white-gloved hands.

Florence grimaced at Rosemary. “Well, Miss Epps, she went into her office half an hour ago saying she wasn’t to be disturbed.”

Rosemary shot Florence a smile. “I’ll just pop my head in and see how she’s doing.”

“Your funeral,” Florence said, turning back to her papers with raised eyebrows.

“Well, she hasn’t murdered me yet,” said Rosemary, the volume of her voice going up a bit as she headed towards one of the doors next to the reference desk. Karl followed, getting close enough to see that it had a brass nameplate with the name and title “Adriane Dolmetsch, Head Archivist” inscribed on it. Rosemary knocked briskly at the door and then opened it, sticking her head into the room. “Yoo-hoo, Adriane! Wie gehts, mein Schatz?”

“What do you want this time, Rosmarin?” an even-toned female voice responded.

“Marya’s arrived. I thought I’d introduce the two of you.”

Karl’s face twisted in consternation at the thought that she had been calling him Marya to other people. He had somehow enjoyed the thought of it being a joke between himself and Rosemary.

“…very well,” the voice responded, sounding grudging.

A tall, raw-boned woman, with brownish skin and greyish hair and eyes and beigeish everything else emerged from the office, staring down at Karl for a long moment that left him feeling as if she’d peeled back his skin in order to get a good look at what really made him tick. After that moment, she turned her attention to Rosemary and said, “He is not as impressive as I was expecting him to be.”

“No one is,” said Rosemary drily. “Dr. Kelley, Adriane Dolmetsch. Adriane, Dr. Karl Kelley.” Rosemary turned to the taller woman and thrust a finger at her. “I want you to play nice with him for a few weeks, Adriane.”

Adriane waved a white-gloved hand in his direction and turned to go back into her office. “Yes, very good, of course. You know that I only play nice as long as they play nice with me, Rosmarin.”

“He promises to be a good boy. Don’t you, Dr. Kelley?” Rosemary shot him a sly little grin and a wink.

“Er. Yes,” Karl stammered out, finally finding his tongue.

Adriane paused in the doorway to her office to turn and stare at him again, and he felt a cold shiver travel down his spine. “Indeed,” she said, and then disappeared once more into her office.

“Well, that went well!” Rosemary said in a cheery voice. “Let’s get out of here before she decides she actually took a disgust of you and comes back out to sear your flesh from your bones.”

“I heard that,” Adriane called through her office door.

Rosemary laughed, and called back, “Bis später, liebschen!”

“I am neither your treasure nor your little love, Rosmarin!” came the returning shout. From her perch behind the reference desk, Florence was eying Rosemary with barely-disguised distress.

Rosemary laughed again and took Karl by the elbow, leading him out of the reading room. “Well. I think that went well,” she said as she shut the door behind them.

Karl, on the other hand, was feeling somewhat wrung-out by the encounter. And it had been an encounter—there were no other words for the experience of meeting the head archivist. “She seems, ah…”

“Nice?”

“The word I was looking for is terrifying.”

“Well, that too.” They’d made it out of the building by then, and instead of pausing as she had when they’d left the lab, Rosemary took off down one of the paths. “The key is to treat her with respect.”

Karl eyed Rosemary dubiously. “I am not entirely certain we have the same definition of the word respect,” he said.

“Well, there’s you, and then there’s me.” Rosemary grinned up at him. “See, she’s not allowed to ban me from the archives.”

Rosemary’s pager beeped at her from one of her suit pockets as they made their way back to the lab building. She pulled it out to check the code and sighed. “Looks like there’s something high-priority waiting for me back at the lab. I’ll have to foist you off on my assistant once we get there, all right? He’ll make sure you get back to the apartments in one piece.”

“Yes, of course,” Dr. Kelley said. He was looking drawn and exhausted again; clearly he had not yet accustomed himself to the time difference.

Or perhaps he was still feeling the strain of the, ah, rather unusual way his recruitment had been covered up. Rosemary had managed to get her hands on one of the special ops fellows that Mr. Carter had taken with him to Russia the day before, after she’d sent Dr. Kelley back to bed; the scenario he’d described would have traumatized just about anyone, and Rosemary wasn’t entirely convinced that the dour Russian doctor hadn’t been suffering constantly from the side effects of repeated trauma before then.

She would have to think about that. Rosemary thought that Dr. Kelley was probably made of some pretty stern stuff; after all, he’d survived Volgograd, and he’d survived the current political situation in Russia… but that sort of repeated trauma could have unexpected side effects. And Goddard Futuristics, for all that it was the place to be if you wanted to do real research, the type that would change the world… well, Mr. Carter had always had a rather unusual management style, and it could take some getting used to. It had taken Rosemary three years to get to the point where she’d been able to let Mr. Kerr’s insults and over-the-top threats roll off her like water off a duck’s back, and while the adjustment period had been a good deal shorter with Mr. Carter, it hadn’t exactly been easy.

And for a less resilient personality, one that had been broken again and again and pieced back together out of whatever pieces were left, that sort of handling could be disastrous.

Of course, Rosemary was probably worrying about nothing. She shot Dr. Kelley a brief glance; he’d remained quiet during the walk back to the lab building so far. She hoped she was misjudging him, that this version of him would disappear once he’d managed to sleep off his exhaustion and get into the swing of working at Goddard. But it always paid to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, and if he would need additional babysitting during his adjustment period, she needed to figure that out now.

Trauma. It all came down to trauma.

To Mr. Carter, trauma was something exploitable. He never hired someone new without knowing exactly what their breaking points were, and how he could use those breaking points to control that person.

So, was it better for her to lean in to the trauma? To desensitize him to it, by poking and prodding until he felt nothing at all, until Carter’s jabs meant nothing to him? Or was it better to smooth it over, to help him find ways to hide it?

Healing it was, of course, outside of Rosemary’s scope of expertise. But she’d become quite the expert at hiding trauma over the years, and she thought she might be able to offer him a pointer or two, if it came down to it.

She took him straight to Charles’ office when they got back to the lab complex. “What’s the emergency?”

“Pryce was looking for you. Something about the…” Charles trailed off, shooting a worried glance at Dr. Kelley. “Well, you know.”

Rosemary sighed. Charles could be referring to any one of a half-dozen projects. She’d have to go down to Pryce’s lab and find out for herself which it was. “All right. If she calls again, let her know I’m on my way. And here.” Rosemary detached a copy of her office key from the ring she kept in her suit pocket next to the beeper. “Dr. Kelley left a notebook in my office. You let him in there to get it, then you bring him straight back to the apartments, all right?”

Charles took the key and nodded. “All right, Miss Epps. Good luck with Dr. Pryce.”

Rosemary let out a light laugh that she wasn’t really feeling. “Oh, Charlie boy, you know I don’t need luck with her. It’s the rest of the world that needs to watch out.”

She turned her back on Dr. Kelley and her assistant, immediately turning her mind to the extremely long list of potential tasks that might be awaiting her, and leaving just a little bit of room for Pryce to surprise her.

Though, as she headed down the stairs to the sub-basement where Pryce had her lab, she couldn’t quite help spending one more worried thought on the subject of Dr. Kelley.


	9. Hilbert Gets Lost (Both Figuratively and Literally)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No on-screen smut but there’s off-screen sex that Hilbert listens in on.

January 22nd, 1989

By his third morning at Goddard Futuristics, Dmitri—no, Karl, he had to get used to calling himself by that name—felt as if he had almost adjusted to the time difference between St. Petersburg and Canaveral. The afternoon before, when Rosemary’s assistant returned him to his apartment, he’d settled down with the notes he’d taken earlier that day and worked out a research plan that would compensate for some of the weak points Rosemary had pointed out in his work on the Koschei Bessmertney Virus so far. And then, he’d tried one of the tv dinners (and had been thoroughly unimpressed) and had fallen into bed, exhausted.

But unlike his first two nights, he was not too exhausted to dream. His dreams had started as a nightmarish mishmash: flashes of the plane ride; looking down on his own corpse; wandering a tangled labyrinth of of paths through a jungle, breathing in air heavy with moisture; the strange gaze of the head archivist stripping him bare; Mr. Carter with his blue eyes and golden curls, looking like an angel and offering him a demon’s bargain.

And everywhere there was Rosemary, darting in and out, dragging him from one scene to another: sitting across from him in the plane, sipping a cup of coffee and chattering about the view out the window; examining his dead body and telling him he made a lovely corpse; taking him by the elbow and shoving through a waterfall of vines, out into bright sunlight; standing between him and the archivist, a finger outstretched as she scolded the other woman; stepping in and whisking him away from Mr. Carter and off into a wonderland of a lab.

“Come now, Marya,” the Rosemary in his dreams had said, leaning close and smiling at him with those red, red lips of hers. “Shackle death for me.”

Dmitri—Karl—had woken in the middle of the night at that, soaked in sweat and gasping for breath. And then he remembered, for a brief moment, Rosemary’s hand on his shoulder that first night, telling him to sleep, telling him it would all sort itself out in his brain in the morning, and he slept once more. If he dreamed again that night, he did not remember his dreams, and he woke feeling strangely refreshed, given how restless the first part of his night had been.

Once he’d showered the dried sweat of the night off and dressed himself again, Karl decided he would try to find the cafeteria on his own. Rosemary’s assistant, Charles, had told him that the cafeteria remained open—albeit for more limited hours—on Sundays for those staff members who worked over the weekend and for the staff who lived on-site and didn’t care to cook for themselves. Karl did know how to cook, but the kitchen in his apartment, while fully-stocked with ready-made meals and granola bars, protein bars and bottled drinks, canned meats and bagged noodles, was woefully lacking in anything he recognized as an ingredient for an actual meal. He supposed it made sense; perhaps they had not known when he would take possession of the apartment exactly, only that it would happen soon, and it wouldn’t have done to lay in perishable foods. But he would have to figure out the location of the campus store later in the day and do some shopping.

He headed out onto Goddard’s campus, and after a little bit of trial and error, made his way to the cafeteria. Clearly whoever made the coffee on Sunday mornings had higher standards than the person who had made it the day before; it was actually palatable. The eggs and sausage on offer, on the other hand… Karl shuddered, and opted for bread and butter and jam.

Heartened by his success with the cafeteria, Karl continued, trying to remember the round-about way Rosemary had taken to get to the campus store during their whirlwind tour. This, too, was eventually a success, despite the fact that he encountered three more picturesque water features on the way and had to sit down on a bench at at one for a while. In the end, it turned out that the campus store had even more limited hours on Sundays than the cafeteria, and had already closed. His stomach grumbling, Karl retraced his steps to the cafeteria for lunch, then made his way to the lab complex and back to the cafeteria again, making sure he wouldn’t find himself in front of any more picturesque water features.

Where else? He retraced his steps, returning to the apartment complex, but he’d had a second and third cup of coffee with lunch, and was too jittery to consider returning to his apartment for longer than it took to use the bathroom and gather up a few of the protein bars. So, as best as he could remember, he retraced the tour Rosemary had taken him on, trying to remember what all the buildings contained. That was the other thing about Goddard’s campus that was peculiar, other than the twisting paths and roadways that tied it together, crossing and re-crossing each other in a tangle that he was only starting to make sense of: none of the buildings were labeled. There were numbers on the interior doors in the apartment complex, and the labs and offices in the lab complex had plates on the doors with the names of the people who worked in them, but aside from that, he hadn’t seen any way to distinguish the buildings from one another other than their outwards appearance.

He reached the end of the tour having needed to backtrack only once, and, feeling quite proud of himself for the feat, he decided to try and find the Archives on his own.

After half an hour, he was sure it would be around the next twist in the path he was on, with its tall shrubs blocking him in on either side.

After an hour, he’d backtracked half a dozen times and had completely lost track of where he was, and it had been more than forty-five minutes since he’d seen another human being, even passing. Worse, it was starting to get dark, and while there were lamps spotted here and there along the paths, there were still places where the shadows were deep.

Karl wasn’t afraid of the dark. But perhaps he was afraid of what might lurk in it. Belatedly, he remembered that Florida had alligators; there’d been a small note in his paperwork about what to do if he spotted one on campus, but right now his worry was that he wouldn’t spot one until he was right on top of it.

He could probably outrun an alligator, he thought. But he didn’t want to be in the position where he had to.

“You lost?” A booming baritone rang out behind him, and Karl turned, then took a step back. A giant of a man in well-fitted suit was looming out of the shadows behind him, looking down at Karl in a way that gave him the distinct impression that if he did not manage to answer this man in a satisfactory fashion, Karl would find himself in a rather large amount of pain.

“Well?” the man asked.

Karl realized he was gaping. “Er. Yes. I was trying to find the archives at first, but I have only been there once, and Rosemary walked very quickly…”

The man’s shoulders seemed to relax, though the rest of his posture was still on alert. Perhaps the man had a military background. “Ah, you’ll be Miss Rosie’s latest,” he drawled. “Come on, then. I’m headed to the apartments myself. Let’s get you back to where you belong.” The man turned away from Karl, then looked back over his shoulder. “Comin’?”

Karl scampered after the man, then fell in at his side. They walked silently for a few minutes, but eventually the man looked down at Karl curiously and spoke. “Virology, right? I remember Rosie sayin’ something about a virologist.”

“And radiology,” Karl said, frowning up at the man.

The man shrugged. “It’s all the same to me, though I’m sure Rosie would smack me upside the head for sayin’ so.”

Karl considered the mental image this statement caused, and found himself wondering how it would work. Would this man bend double so that Rosemary could reach his head to smack him, or would she have to scale him like a tree?

The man laughed, and Karl realized he’d said this thought out loud. “Depends on if I’m in a givin’ mood that day,” he said, smiling congenially down at Karl. “Sometimes I pick her up, if I’m feelin’ real friendly.”

Karl felt a cold sensation in the pit of his stomach. The way this man was talking, he was close with Rosemary. Very close. And as much as Karl had been telling himself not to consider Rosemary’s flirting as indicative that she was interested in him beyond them working together, as indicative of anything other than she wanted to coax him into revealing more of his personality so that she could get to know him… Well, he’d been lonely for a long time, that was all. And that had left him feeling strangely possessive of the affectionate teasing Rosemary had subjected him to in the few days since he’d met her.

Karl eyed the man and sighed. Well, who would be interested in Karl if they had a handsome ginger-haired giant of a man around? Especially one who looked like he could lift Rosemary in one arm and Karl in the other and not break a sweat. Karl could certainly see the appeal; he thought almost anyone interested in men would.

“And here we are!” The man gestured expansively ahead of them, where the lights from the apartment complex’s parking lot were shining through the trees. He followed Karl in through the front door and down the hall, then passed him to knock on Rosemary’s door. Karl made a fuss about unlocking his own door, fiddling with the ring of keys, pretending his key was stuck in the lock just long enough to see the next door down open and hear Rosemary’s cry of delight at the sight of the ginger giant on her doorstep.

Karl sighed again, and entered his apartment, resigning himself to yet another mediocre tv dinner.

“Al!” Rosemary threw her arms around her friend, pulling him further into her apartment. Al kicked the door shut behind him. “Oh, god. It’s been three months, hasn’t it?”

Al smiled and slung a heavy arm around her shoulders. “How’ve you been, Rosie?”

“All right,” Rosemary said, stepping back to look up at him. Al stooped and pressed a kiss to her cheek as she did. “I’m back to a full complement of scientists finally.”

“Oh, yeah? How’s that going?”

“All right,” Rosemary said again, and winced. Twice in a row. Al would notice that.

All Al did was raise his eyebrows and give her a skeptical look. “Think I ran into your new little lamb on my way here,” he said. “The fellow could use a sheepdog to keep him in line. Got lost on the way to the archives.”

“Shortish man, no hair, glasses?” Rosemary asked.

“Cheekbones you could cut glass with, lives next door?”

“That’s the fellow. He really tried to find the archives on his own?” Rosemary tried to keep the surprise out of her voice.

“How long has he been on campus?”

“He arrived Thursday night.”

“Ambitious fellow. Took me three weeks here before I felt comfortable tryin’ for the archives on my own,” Al said. “You’ll want to keep a close eye on him, Rosie.”

Rosemary felt her face heat. “I’ll be sure to, though I know for a fact that’s a thundering lie.”

Al grinned. “Now, Rosie, when have I ever lied to you?”

Rosemary tilted her head back so she could hit him with the full force of her glare. “All the damn time, but in particular just now, when you pretended that the layout of this campus isn’t your particular proclivity for over-the-top security measures in action.”

Al shrugged, then leaned down to Rosemary again, nuzzling up against her neck and stroking his hands down her arms to take her hands in his own. “Sorry, darlin’. Lyin’ just comes easy to me sometimes. What can I do to make it up to you?”

Rosemary let her brain go soft and fuzzy and turned to press a kiss to Al’s ear. “I can think of a thing or two,” she murmured.

Al laughed and scooped her up in his arms, and moments later had her flat on her back on top of her bed. And then, she let her brain stop working for the next little while, forgetting about everything outside of that moment.

Karl had just stuck his tv dinner in the microwave when he heard a loud shriek from next door. He was out of the kitchen in a second, then realized that he could hear Rosemary giggling now, even through the closed door of his bedroom and the wall beyond that separated their two apartments.

He knew better, but he opened the door of the bedroom anyway, and winced as the giggles quickly subsided into a low moan. More moans followed. Somewhere in the background, Karl’s microwave beeped, but he was frozen there in the doorway of his bedroom, listening as the giant man Rosemary had let into her apartment did what were apparently extremely pleasurable things to her. Or at least Karl assumed that was what was happening.

There was a hoarse, breathless little scream through the wall, then the low baritone of the man, words unintelligible. A moment of silence, and then the silence was replaced by more moaning, and the rhythmic thump of a bed against the wall.

Karl realized he’d been standing in the doorway to his bedroom for long enough that his tv dinner was probably cold all the way through again, rather than still frozen in the middle and molten around the edges. He let out a huff of breath, not quite a sigh, and shook his head, trying to shake some sense into himself.

Why had he listened to that? He hardly knew anything about Rosemary, beyond that she had gone out of her way to be kind to him and was shockingly intelligent, but now he knew what she sounded like when having sex, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to look her in the eye in the morning.

And why was he wishing it had been him in that bedroom with Rosemary?


	10. So Much Unnecessary Flirting (and also some science)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No smut. Some Cutter being a bitch.

January 23rd, 1989

Karl readied himself by seven-thirty that morning, that odd, detached feeling back again despite the fact that he was considerably less sleep-deprived than when he’d arrived. He’d figured out the coffee maker in his apartment, more or less, though the resulting cups of coffee were a bit weak, and he’d choked down a granola bar for breakfast. Neither Rosemary nor Charles had given him instructions on what he was supposed to do with himself that day, but it was a Monday, so he suspected that either Rosemary would show up to drag him off to the lab building, or the phone in his apartment would ring sometime soon and someone would provide him with instructions.

It was the former; a brisk knock on his door at a few minutes before eight revealed Rosemary, standing in the hall of the apartment complex, ready for work herself. She looked him over and nodded in approval, no doubt because this time she didn’t have to wait for him to put his shoes on. And then, she whisked him off to the lab complex again.

Karl found he couldn’t quite bear to look at her directly, so instead he retreated into stiff formality, providing single-word answers to her queries about how his Sunday had gone, whether he’d slept well, how he was feeling.

Was Rosemary aware of how thin that wall was, between her bedroom and his own? Did she know he’d heard her the night before?

If she did know, she was doing an excellent job of pretending she didn’t. He would have expected caution or embarrassment from her, but she was treating him with the same casual, flirtatious manner as she had before.

“Just so you know what’s expected from you today, we’re going to have a quick meeting first, and then I’ll take you to your lab and introduce you to your lab techs. They’ve been hard at work all weekend with the viral samples you provided and a batch of mice, so I imagine you’ll want to spend the day checking the work they’ve done so far and working on a proposal for what happens next.”

“I have already been thinking about that,” he offered up, waving the notepad she’d given him on Saturday in her direction.

“Excellent. It’s always best to hit the ground running when starting a new job, isn’t it?” Rosemary opened the front door of the lab complex with her keycard and Karl opened the door for her, feeling his face flush when she beamed a smile up at him along with a cheerful “Thanks!”

Another minute, and he was sitting across the desk from Rosemary in her office as she shuffled through a few papers, perching the reading glasses she had on a chain around her neck on her nose and peering down at them. She cleared her throat and shot him another blinding smile that left him blushing again, despite the fact that he still couldn’t quite manage to meet her eye. “So. The first thing to know about your lab techs is that you’ve technically only got a half-share of their time. Aditi’s microbiology, mostly, and she’s normally with Dr. Dominguez on the fourth floor, and Andrew usually works with the chemists in the building. But both of them have experience with animal testing, and both of them aren’t being fully utilized in their other labs, so you’re a growth experience for them, and you’ll be able to pull them in full time as necessary if you have need of their help.”

Karl nodded, and Rosemary continued. “The other thing to keep in mind is that neither of them have a high enough clearance level to know about the human testing that Goddard does. I know that’s probably a ways off for you, but it’s something you need to be careful about, all right?”

Karl nodded again, and, because she seemed to be waiting for some further acknowledgement, added a stiff “Of course.”

“All right. As long as you’re clear on that. Now, you said that you’d already been working on a proposal for where this is going from here?”

Karl nodded yet again.

“Well, give it here,” Rosemary said, sounding impatient and holding her hand out for his notepad.

Karl looked down at his messy scrawl of Russian cursive. “Er.”

“Is there a problem, Dr. Kelley?”

“It is simply that I prefer to work in my native tongue when I am, what is word…”

“Brainstorming?” Rosemary suggested.

“That sounds right,” Karl said.

“I’ll let you know if your handwriting is illegible,” Rosemary said, still holding her hand out for the notepad, “But the language it’s written in should not be an issue.”

Karl flipped to the page of the notepad where he’d started his notes on the research proposal and handed it to Rosemary, shooting her a dubious look as he did. Rosemary simply smiled at him, then turned her attention to the notepad, uncapping a fountain pen and using it to trace her location in his notes, scrawling a note or two of her own in English as she made her way through. At the end, she nodded, then capped the pen and handed the notepad back to him. “Looks good. Get that written up all nice and neat in English for me. Carter will want a report.”

Karl blinked, and read one of her notes. He shouldn’t have been surprised to find it relevant to the section of his own notes that it was scrawled next to, but he was. “A ty govorish' po russki?” he asked, looking at her straight on for the first time that morning.

“Ochen' plokhoy russkiy,” came Rosemary’s response, the consonants too dull, the vowels strange, but recognizably Russian.

“I see,” Karl said, still startled, and suddenly he couldn’t resist teasing her. “I shall have to watch what I say around you.”

Rosemary shot him an arch look. “Indeed you shall.” She set down the pen, which she’d been fiddling with since handing his notepad back, and removed her reading glasses, folding them and letting them drop to her chest. “Let’s head to your lab and get you going, shall we?”  
  


Using Al like that had been a nasty trick, Rosemary had thought as Dr. Kelley opened his door to her that morning. Not that Al minded being used that way, of course, but as she watched Dr. Kelley turn stiff and overly polite under her gaze, as he avoided looking her way, as he answered her questions with as few words as possible, Rosemary was hard-pressed not to regret it. But Rosemary had needed it, that evening with Al. Not just to relieve some of the pent-up lust her strange attraction to Dr. Kelley had caused, but for the effect it had on Dr. Kelley as well, throwing up a wall of formality between the two of them.

Three men. Three men, and occasional visits to a female prostitute. All in all, it pointed towards a man who was interested in other men, and even if he weren’t technically her subordinate and out-of-bounds for that reason, the knowledge of his past relationships should have made it easy to remember that he wasn’t for her. But it hadn’t been easy, not when he’d smiled that strange little smile of his at her, with his eyes lighting up behind the thick black frames of his glasses. It hadn’t been easy, not when he seemed to be responding to her casual flirting with cautious forays of his own.

Rosemary thought she’d just been a little pent up. She’d had a relationship of sorts with another lab manager, Charlotte, for a few years, the two of them getting together to relieve tension from time to time by fucking each other senseless, but there hadn’t been anything beyond that. When Charlotte had left for the Antartica research lab six months ago, Rosemary had been able to bid her farewell without any emotion to it. Since then… well, Al was always up for a good time, but he was off on one information-gathering mission or another far too often, or off investigating security threats, or in someone else’s bed. And Rosemary hadn’t quite clicked with anyone else since Charlotte.

She was too close to Pryce and Carter, that was the problem. She’d heard the rumors, that she was the toy of one or the other of them, or perhaps even both at once. She’d heard herself called Carter’s favorite bitch—hell, Dr. Messer, the pharmacist who’d been in Dr. Kelley’s lab up until nine months ago, when her rotation on Janus Station had started, had gone so far as to call Rosemary that to her face. And while Rosemary knew people in other departments, she didn’t get out of the lab complex for long enough to scope them out as potential partners except for special occasions, like the company Christmas party.

So for now, she’d keep making do with Al’s spare minutes and be grateful for them.

Last night, those minutes had been necessary. Necessary to relieve her own tension, necessary to make sure Dr. Kelley thought she already had someone in her bed, necessary to put that boundary in place before she was tempted to do something she’d regret and feel Dr. Kelley out to find out just how interested in men he was, and whether women might be an option he’d consider as well. And there was no space for regret in that decision.

Regret still threatened, though, when his eyes lit up at her clumsy attempt at Russian, when he’d smiled and said he’d have to watch what he said around her.

The introduction to Aditi and Andrew went well enough. Both techs seemed to be somewhat in awe of Dr. Kelley; Rosemary had made sure to brief them on some of his former projects, albeit in language that heavily disguised them and removed them from the context of Dmitri Vologin. Of course, they were young, and Aditi was planning to go back for her doctorate in a year or two. Rosemary supposed she would have been equally in awe of someone with Dr. Kelley’s record, back when she’d first started working as a lab tech herself.

Rosemary left Dr. Kelley checking over their work with the mice and left the lab complex, headed towards the admin building at a brisk walk. She owed Mr. Carter a report on Dr. Kelley’s first few days at Goddard, and she was running a few minutes late for it.

Well, all right, she would most likely get to his office at their appointed time, but Carter was the sort of man you waited on, not the sort you kept waiting, and he expected people to arrive early for their meetings with him, just in case he was ready for you then. He never was, of course, but that didn’t stop them all from catering to his whims. After all, the suite of CEOs might ostensibly run Goddard Futuristics, but it was William Carter who was the nerve center of the company, sitting in the Communications Department like a spider in the middle of a web, waiting to pounce at any hint of disorder out on the strands that lead through every other department and straight through his hands. And anyone who forgot this didn’t manage to stay a part of the company for very long.

Rosemary was panting by the time she reached the anteroom to Carter’s office. His secretary, another William, who went by Bill to avoid confusion, shot her a look over the top of his glasses, but she’d shaved off a few minutes on the way over and had just enough time to start breathing properly and run fingers through her wig to smooth it down before Carter’s voice echoed over the intercom, asking Bill to send her in.

She sat in one of the chairs in front of Carter’s desk and set her file on Dr. Kelley down. “Good morning, sir.”

“Rosemary. I take it your new pet is settling in?”

Rosemary nodded. “I believe so, sir, though it may take another week or so for the ball to get rolling on his research, as it were.”

“Hm. But he’s adjusting well to his new circumstances?”

“I don’t know that we’ll ever make an American of him, and I think that living in a swamp is going to be a bit of an adjustment, but… he’ll do.” Rosemary glanced down at the file for a brief moment, considering. “He’s likely to be the sort to cling to lab work in lieu of interacting with the outside world, I suspect.”

“What makes you say that?” One of Carter’s eyebrows shot up quizzically.

Rosemary glanced at the file again, thinking over the contents, the notes on her interview with Dr. Kelley that it contained. “He’s… I’m not quite sure how to put it.” She tapped a finger on the arm of her chair as she considered. “That virus is wife, child, and religion to him,” she said finally, doing her best to keep her reluctance to reveal something so personal about Dr. Kelley out of her voice. She hadn’t quite said it in those words in her notes, but Carter knew her style well enough to read between the lines and come to that conclusion himself. “Making it work matters more than anything else to him, and more than that, he believes in it. Truly and deeply, with more certainty than he believes in anything else, I think.”

“I see. Well. That’s definitely information worth knowing about our dear Dr. Kelley.” Carter finally reached across the desk for the file she’d brought with her, and started flipping through it, pausing here or there to scan a paragraph or two. “I thought it might be something of that sort when I met him myself, but it’s good to get a second opinion,” he added. He looked up at Rosemary sharply. “Will he take direction?”

Rosemary nodded. “Better than some others, I think. He seemed almost excited to have his research so far ripped apart. Threw himself right in to stitching it back together in a new form, and I think his work on the Koschei Bessmertny virus will be stronger for it.”

Carter winced. “We really do need to do some rebranding there.”

Rosemary remained silent. She liked the name, or she had since Adriane had explained the reference to her, though she supposed it would be impenetrable to most people.

“I was thinking… Decima.” Carter said, like a magician revealing the result of a trick.

Rosemary snorted. “Sounds like a sports car.”

“From the sound of things, it’s the sports car of retroviruses. Powerful and fast.”

“Fair enough,” Rosemary said with a little nod. The information they had on the previous trials of the Koschei Bessmertny virus had indicated that it was still rather volatile. “I’ll run it by Dr. Kelley.”

“No, no. I think Decima is it. Let him know.” Carter flipped through the file again, then shut it with a nod. “You’ll get another report to me when things get underway properly, won’t you?”

Rosemary knew that, despite the fact that this was phrased as a question, it was really an order. “Of course, sir. Will that be all?”

“For today.” Carter waved his hand dismissively, and Rosemary left, making her way back to the lab complex.

Andrew was in tears, hiding in Charles’ office, waiting for her to get back. “I won’t work with that man,” he declared, his voice hoarse.

Rosemary frowned. “What happened?”

“I just reached in to get one of the mice out for him to inspect and it bit me and got loose, and he laid into me, said I was ignoring proper lab protocol. Then he started shouting at me in Russian. I got out of there after that.”

Rosemary sighed. She’d have to get some live traps up to Dr. Kelley’s lab. “Andrew, you do realize you’re not working with pharmaceuticals here, right? That mouse has the potential to spread the retrovirus to anyone it comes in contact with, once the incubation period is over.”

Andrew hiccuped and looked down at his hand with an expression of terror.

Rosemary sighed again and patted him on the shoulder. “Two weeks. We’ve got two weeks to catch it again. You’re going to be fine. But if you really think you can’t work with him, we’ll find some other way for you to stretch your legs a bit, all right?”

Andrew nodded. “Thank you, Miss Epps.”

“Yes, well, go over to the medical complex and get someone to look at that bite,” Rosemary said. “Just because you’re not going to die from a retrovirus doesn’t mean it might not get infected.”

Andrew left Charles’ office, and Charles sighed. “I did tell him it was going to be all right, but…”

“It’s fine, Charles. He’s a little more high-strung than I remember him being last time I talked to him, though. You know anything about that?”

Charles gave Rosemary a guilty look and rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “Well…”

“He finally told his parents about the two of you, didn’t he,” Rosemary said, sighing yet again. “Well, it had to be done, I suppose. They strike him from the family tree?”

“Something like that,” Charles said. “I mean, I’m glad, a little bit, because it means that he’s finally moving in with me, but then I feel guilty about feeling glad, and…”

“Don’t. You deserve a little bit of happiness, the two of you,” Rosemary said, keeping the sudden rush of envy she felt out of her voice. Two young people in love, doing what people in love had always done, and finding a way to be together. She wished them luck, she really did, but all the same they made her feel… old. Sad. Alone.

She shoved the thought down. Time to get back to work. “I’m going to check in on Dr. Kelley and make sure he hasn’t sent Aditi into hysterics, then I’ll be in my office for the afternoon,” she said to Charles.

“I’ll make sure to snag a sandwich for you when the cafeteria sends them over,” Charles said, smiling at Rosemary, a smile almost as blinding as the fake corporate one Rosemary used to dazzle people. But this smile was all real, all joy, and for a moment that feeling of being alone threatened to overwhelm Rosemary again. She forced a blinding smile of her own to her face, then whirled away, ready to make herself so busy that such a feeling wouldn’t be able to latch on to her the way this one seemed to be trying to do.

Karl had given up on locating the mouse half an hour ago and had sent Aditi off to the other scientist she worked for. Since then, he had been sitting at the computer in the little side room that served as an office and was trying to turn his notes into a reasonable approximation of a research proposal, but the thought of the loose mouse, with the Koschei Bessmertny virus incubating inside it, niggled at his brain, and he kept stalking out into the main lab, peering under tables, hoping he’d catch sight of it darting from one hiding place to another.

He was down on his hands and knees, peering behind a piece of lab equipment he hadn’t quite managed to discover the purpose of yet, when Rosemary appeared in his lab with a jar of peanut butter and a box that had pictures of live traps for rodents on the side.

“So you made a man cry today. Nice start,” she said, her voice a little tart.

Karl frowned, and got to his feet. “I am sorry, but—”

“No need to explain yourself to me,” Rosemary interrupted, setting the box of traps down on one of the tables in the lab. “I understand why you did it, and it was probably necessary.” She sighed, and split the tape holding the box shut with a key, then returned the keyring to her jacket pocket. “I’m just a little put out right now because I’m the one who has to deal with the aftermath. Andrew’s saying he won’t work with you.”

“I am sure Miss Korai will be more than sufficient for my needs,” Karl said stiffly. “I prefer to work alone, and if, as you say, they do not have clearance for the, ah, more delicate parts of my research…”

Rosemary pulled a trap out of the box and slammed it down on the tabletop, hard. “Does it require a Ph.D. to feed mice, Dr. Kelley?”

“…what?”

“How about to monitor and record symptoms and viral progression? To administer viral antibodies? To clean out cages? To dispose of the bodies, once they’ve served their purpose?” A second trap and then a third trap hit the tabletop, just as hard as the first had.

“I don’t understand,” Karl said, starting to get frustrated

“You’re here because we want to make use of your brain, Dr. Kelley, not to care for mice.” A plastic knife appeared out of somewhere, and Rosemary was using it to bait the traps with globs of peanut butter. “We’re not paying you to waste your time or our money like that.”

“Yebat' ty suka!” Karl exclaimed, almost angry now.

Rosemary shot him a sardonic look. “I’m sorry, did the flirting fool you? Of course I’m a bitch. I’ve worked for Carter for fourteen years, remember?” She turned back to the traps and finished setting them up. “And I’ll have to ask you not to call me a bitch in a language I understand going forward.”

The brief surge of anger Karl had felt drained away, replaced by curiosity and confusion. “What, so you are happy to be called a bitch, provided you do not know the language it is said in?”

“Something like that,” Rosemary said, her tone of voice no longer irritated, looking up and shooting him a little grin that had her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Let’s just say I’ve been trying to find out exactly how many languages Adriane knows how to speak and curse words are the most annoying way I can think of to find out.”

Karl let out a chuckle at the thought of Rosemary going toe-to-toe with the intimidating archivist, curse words on her lips, and Rosemary’s grin grew a little broader.

“Where do you think we ought to put these?” she asked, holding up one of the traps.

“I think the mouse scurried off that way,” Karl said, gesturing a little further down the wall from the piece of equipment he’d been examining. “But we lost sight of it quickly, and we have not seen it since.”

“Right. Two traps along that wall for now, then, behind all the equipment, and one on the opposite side of the room. And we’ll take a look tomorrow and decide on a new strategy if this hasn’t been effective.” She crossed to him and handed him one of the traps, then wandered off to place the two in her own arms.

Karl found himself staring at her backside as she bent over to place one of the traps, then shook his head to clear it. I really need to stop doing that, he told himself as he crouched down to place his own trap behind the piece of machinery he’d been examining when Rosemary had come into the room.

“I had a little talk with Mr. Carter this morning,” she said conversationally as she placed the trap on the other side of the room. “He thinks we ought to change the name of the virus to Decima.”

“Decima?” Karl asked, dubious.

“Yeah, I know.” Rosemary turned and came back his way, stopping at the lab table and leaning forwards against it, her arms crossed in front of her. “But I was thinking about it, on the walk back over here. Decima.” Her voice had turned thoughtful, and her gaze was distant, looking off to some far corner of the ceiling as she tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “One out of every ten,” she said, her eyes focusing suddenly and fiercely on Karl’s face. He found his gaze caught by hers, and couldn’t look away. “That’s how many of the original inhabitants survived Volgograd. How many of the children who born within ten years of the meltdown survived to adulthood. One out of every ten, and those are odds you beat.” She lifted her chin, as if challenging him. “So. Decima. For that one out of every ten. For the odds you intend to beat again.”

Karl couldn’t think of how to answer her, and in any case, he thought his mouth might had gone too dry to allow him to speak. So instead he nodded.

“I suppose I can’t call you Marya any more,” Rosemary said, smiling at him. “Ah, well, it was fun while it lasted.” She pushed herself away from the table and twisted her head from side to side, popping her neck. “I’m off to my office to reorganize schedules and see if I can find someone else to deal with the mice when Aditi’s not available, all right? And you just get back to putting together that research proposal for me.”

Karl nodded again, and then Rosemary was gone, sweeping the force of her personality after her like a cloak, leaving his lab feeling strangely empty in her wake. After a few long moments, Karl shook his head to clear it again, then returned to his office and got back to work.  
  


Rosemary had appeared back in his lab later in the afternoon, to check the traps and check his progress on the proposal. She leaned against the desk next to him, her reading glasses perched on her nose, her arm pressed against his as she read his work so far off the computer screen. Karl offered to stand up and let her have the chair, but she shook her head. “I’ll just be a moment longer,” she said, reaching in front of him to use the arrow keys to scroll her way down the contents of the word processor.

“You could at least use the mouse.” Karl said, shoving his chair back from the desk to give her a little more space.

“Nah, I hate using right-handed mice. I always forget that the buttons are the other way around,” she answered in a distracted tone of voice. She finished scanning his work so far, and nodded, then turned her head to look at him. “Good. The right level of detail for me, and clear enough I can condense it for Mr. Carter. Your English is excellent, by the way.”

“Thank you,” Karl said, feeling awkward, still uncomfortable meeting Rosemary’s eye, but feeling as if he should. Fortunately, his stomach interjected by growling loudly, and Rosemary sighed and glared at his midsection over the top of her reading glasses.

“You worked through lunch, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

“I suppose I did.”

“Right. Cafeteria. Now.”

“I would like to finish this up first—”

“Dr. Kelley,” Rosemary said, her voice stern in a way that went straight to his hindbrain and demanded compliance. “I’m willing to put up with a lot from the scientists I work with, but missing meals when there isn’t an immediately pressing deadline to justify working through them is not something I tolerate.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Karl said in a small voice. He stood up from the desk, stretching briefly and then heading towards the door of the lab, Rosemary a few paces ahead of him. He glanced around the main lab briefly when they exited the small side office. “Have the traps been effective?”

Rosemary shook her head as she pushed out the main lab door. “Not yet. My guess is the little bugger’s still feeling pretty cautious, though. Hopefully she’ll get her courage back after the lights go out tonight.” She paused in the hallway once the lab door was shut behind them. “You’ve been keeping that side lab shut up tight, right?”

Karl had been so overwhelmed by the main lab, full of gleaming instruments he only half recognized, that he’d completely forgotten about the side lab, made over in the image of his lab back in Russia. He nodded.

“Thank goodness. One less place to look. I think I’ll bring up another batch of traps while you’re at lunch, though, and stick one in your office.”

Karl nodded again, then realized that Rosemary had turned away too soon to see it, and added, “Yes, that sounds like good idea.”

They parted ways on the second floor landing, Rosemary checking in briefly to make sure he could make it to the cafeteria on his own. “I could go grab Charles if you need a guide,” she said.

Karl shook his head, and managed to look at her properly and offer up a little smile. “I will be fine. Thank you.”

Rosemary shot him her dazzling smile in return, then disappeared onto the second floor, and Karl continued on his way to the cafeteria. The weather was a little more brisk today than it had been over the weekend, but it was still uncomfortably humid, and his glasses fogged over the moment he stepped out of the controlled environment of the lab building. He took them off, cleaning them carefully on the edge of his shirt, then sighed. Not because of the glasses, of course, but because of Rosemary and that smile of hers.

Turning forty had changed the way he had approached his work. For the past three and a half years, he’d set everything else aside; his friendships, such as they had been, had deteriorated, and he hadn’t left himself any time for sexual interactions with other people either. His relationship with his research partner was the only strong connection he’d had left by the time Mr. Carter had come along with his offer, and lately even Kostya had been making noises about Dmitri being too focused, too engrossed in his work on Koschei Bessmertny. But what else could he do? He’d started to feel the press of time more and more, joints that no longer worked as well as they once had, a mind that succumbed to the fog of exhaustion far more easily than it had in the past, after he’d spent too many late nights in the lab.

But Rosemary’s friendly regard, even when mixed in with the sharp sarcasm and sternness she’d been using to keep him in line… well. It made him think that perhaps he missed having connections with other people.

And his attraction to Rosemary’s body and his reaction to the noises he’d heard through the wall of his bedroom the other night left him certain that he’d been missing sex.

Karl considered again, whether Goddard might be willing to provide for that particular physical need as handily as it had provided for the others, but immediately discarded the thought. Who would he even ask? Mr. Carter? He shuddered at the thought. Rosemary? Ah, yes, clearly the way to get off on the right foot with his lab manager, walking up to her and asking whether the company would provide him with sexual companionship alongside his room, board, and salary. Karl snorted. It would have to be an unusual company indeed, to provide that sort of thing for its employees. He had no doubt that the truth of it was that if he wanted sex, he would have to find it on his own, or be content with taking himself in hand.

Perhaps he would find a kindred spirit, or at least someone else who was as lonely as he was, somewhere among the other scientists in the building. He had no doubt that Rosemary would eventually take care of introducing him to the other people in the building as efficiently as she’d taken care of everything else so far.

And perhaps then, Rosemary’s flirtatious manner would not affect him so.

When Karl returned to his lab, another sandwich with an excess of condiments sitting heavily in his gut, a live trap had appeared under his desk and there was a floppy disk sitting next to the computer. A post-it was stuck to the top of the floppy disk. “Bring the proposal by my office when you’re done!” said the scrawl of Rosemary’s handwriting, and the sight of it quirked the corners of his mouth into a smile.

He sat down and worked.

When Rosemary returned to her office after setting the second bunch of live traps in Dr. Kelley’s office, a memo had appeared in the file holder attached to her door. She picked it up and scanned the contents as she unlocked her door, then threw it down on her desk with a scowl. Mr. Carter had refused her request for the budget to hire a new lab tech for the second time since Rosemary had first gotten Dr. Kelley’s file and started setting up his lab. She suspected this repeated refusal was just out of caprice; after all, two months ago, Carter had refused her a new lab tech and offered her whatever budget she thought necessary to make over Dr. Messer’s old lab from one meant for pharmaceutical research, all in the same breath.

Perhaps Carter thought she was getting lazy. He’d certainly noticed her increased boredom and irritability over the past nine months, as having an empty lab on her hands and one fewer scientist to manage wore on her. She liked to be busy.

It kept her from thinking.

She pulled a pile of staff files out of one of her filing cabinets and sat down at her desk with them, along with a copy of everyone’s schedule. Time to figure out if she could move a few shifts around…

Some hours later, frustrated and with a thundering headache, Rosemary glanced up at the clock on her desk. She frowned, then shoved up her sleeve and checked her wristwatch as well. Eight thirty, and no sign of Dr. Kelley with the research proposal he’d been working on. Given what he’d achieved that morning, he should have been done by now. Or at least he should have had better luck in finishing his task than she was having in finding someone both qualified and of the right clearance level to take on some of the menial work in his lab.

Other than herself, that was.

She sighed and stood. Well, time for her to head out anyway; she usually threw together a casserole or something of the sort over the weekend to serve as dinner throughout the week, but she hadn’t felt up to it this past Sunday, which meant it was time to get to the cafeteria before it closed so that she’d have something other than a protein bar to eat for dinner. Might as well gather up Dr. Kelley and his research proposal on the way.

Rosemary did a circuit of the fifth floor before heading to Dr. Kelley’s lab, checking for signs of life. Dr. Weiss was still in his lab, but that was only to be expected; he was running an overnight observation cycle, and he’d stopped by to check in with Rosemary on his way to his own evening meal. But other than that, the only other light on the floor came from Dr. Kelley’s lab, shining mistily through the frosted glass window over his door into the dim hallway now that most of the lights in the building were off for the night. Rosemary knocked and then used her keycard to get in, coming to a halt just inside the door. Dr. Kelley was over near the large, clear-fronted cabinet that maintained a stable environment for the plastic cages of mice within. He was holding one of the mice, checking it over, rubbing a gloved thumb between its ears soothingly and muttering small nothings in Russian.

“Oh, hello,” Rosemary said, forgetting her headache in an instant. “Has our prodigal mouse come home?”

Dr. Kelley looked her way and nodded. “I was just about to leave, come to you with proposal. Heard it protesting the size of the trap.” He glanced at the cages in front of him, then her way, and Rosemary came over, snagging a pair of latex gloves out of the box he’d left on a table before giving him a hand with getting the mouse back in its cage. It ran back and forth, squeaking, then settled down and started grooming its face, and both Rosemary and Dr. Kelley stood watching it for a moment.

“Well. That’s good, then. I’ll get the traps out of here tomorrow morning.”

“I could bring them to you—”

“Dr. Kelley, do we need to have another talk about which tasks, exactly, you require a Ph.D. for and which you do not?”

Dr. Kelley looked a little cowed, but persisted. “You are clearly much more in demand than I am,” he argued, stripping the gloves off and disposing of them before heading towards the little office that was attached to his lab. “It does not make sense for you to be taking care of such a task.”

“Well, no, usually I’d leave it to a lab tech or a janitor, but Dr. Dominguez needs Aditi all day tomorrow, and the janitor won’t be in until Wednesday night, assuming you don’t make a mess of things in the meantime.” Rosemary disposed of her own gloves and followed him, leaning against the frame of the door into his office, watching as he saved his research proposal to the floppy she’d left for him. “So I’ll be on mouse-feeding duty tomorrow anyway. Might as well take care of the traps while I’m at it.”

Dr. Kelley ejected the disk, looking up at Rosemary with a frown. “You really do not have another lab tech experienced in animal trials?”

“Not anyone who has the right clearance level and who isn’t already working full-time for someone else,” she said with a little one-shouldered shrug. “I figure I’ll manage to wear Mr. Carter down on the subject of the budget for lab tech salaries in another month or so, but until then it’s going to have to be whatever time I can spare and a half-share of Aditi, unless I can convince Dr. Solomon to take Andrew on a few hours a week in exchange for James. But Dr. Solomon’s even more brusque than you are, so I doubt she’ll be a good fit for Andrew.”

Dr. Kelley was giving her a blank look, and Rosemary realized she’d been rattling on about names that he had no context for. She sighed and shut her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Sorry. I’ve been locked up in my office trying to juggle the schedule around for the past few hours and it’s left me more than a little frustrated. Just airing some of that frustration out before it festers. Don’t mind me.”

“I do not mind,” Dr. Kelley said, his voice a little husky. She opened her eyes and glanced his way, and he was giving her a strange look that left her feeling peculiar. A sudden shiver ran down her spine—not an unpleasant one—and she was suddenly very aware of the fact that, since Dr. Weiss’s lab was on the other end of the floor, they were essentially alone here.

Rosemary cleared her throat and looked down at her watch. “Time to go get something to eat before the cafeteria closes!” she said in a cheery voice, not looking up at Dr. Kelley again before turning and heading towards the door to his lab. She heard his footsteps behind her and he caught her at the door, the floppy disk clutched in his hand.

“Here,” he said, handing the disk over.

“Care to join me for dinner?” She didn’t want company in her current mood, but the words slipped out anyway, and she found herself thinking that maybe Dr. Kelley’s company, at least, would be tolerable. Or at least he had tolerated her babbling about schedules with equanimity, and that was more than she could say for anyone else, even Charles, whose job it actually was to listen to her babble about schedules.

Dr. Kelley shook his head. “I wish to check over mice once more. Be sure nothing is wrong. And check remaining viral samples for viability.”

“Want me to bring you something, then?”

He hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Thank you. No need to come back here, though. I will return to apartments in hour or so.”

“I’ll get something to go and bring it over when I hear your keys in the lock, then.” Rosemary found herself thinking that it was remarkably considerate of Dr. Kelley, to not make her backtrack to the lab complex with a meal for him, when every other scientist she managed would think nothing of asking that of her. She beamed up at him as she said “See you later!” and turned to leave, suddenly aware that her headache had disappeared entirely at some point over the past few minutes. Strange, that.

The smile didn’t dissipate as Rosemary made her way back down to her office to leave the floppy for the next morning, and despite the frustration of her afternoon, despite the annoyance she felt about the need to play lab tech until she managed to argue Mr. Carter around to letting her hire someone new, she left the lab complex with far more bounce in her step than she usually had at that time of day.

Karl shook off the stunned feeling that Rosemary’s smile had left him with once she was out the door of his lab. He hadn’t realized until that moment that she hadn’t once smiled properly at him up until now, hadn’t realized that all of the other smiles she’d given him hadn’t reached her eyes until this one had. He still wasn’t breathing properly as he pulled on another pair of latex gloves, as he opened the first of the mouse cages, as he examined the creature and made notes on the front of its enclosure with a wax pencil. By the third mouse he was calmer, and by the time he had taken a look at them all he’d regained his equilibrium, but he was still unsettled by the experience.

Did Rosemary know how powerful that smile of hers was?

There were no signs of advanced viral progression among the mice yet; most likely a good sign. The most recent batch of lab rats he’d worked with in Russia, more than half had shown signs of infection by this point, the virus moving far too quickly for him to do much to induce viral mutations, to try treatments before the rats died. He moved on to the refrigeration unit that held viral samples, and took them out, testing one by one, preparing slides and peering at them through the powerful microscope that seemed to be one of the centerpieces of the main room of the lab. Only a few seemed to still be viable, and he sighed in frustration. Koschei Bessmertny—Decima, he reminded himself—had proven to be remarkably fragile outside of test subjects. He’d suspected that most of the samples he’d taken from his lab in Russia would not survive the trip to America, but this was fewer than he’d projected, even taking into account the number of samples that must have been used to infect the mice. He would have to manufacture more.

It was after ten when he finally made his way back to the apartments, but as he opened his apartment door Rosemary poked her head out of her apartment, offering him up another of those styrofoam containers. “It’s a bit, well…” She gave him an apologetic smile and a little shrug. “Sad, I suppose, is the operative word. All that was left by the time I got there was a rather tragic lasagne and some over-cooked spinach. But it’s almost real food.”

He thanked her and took the container, fleeing into his apartment and shutting the door behind himself, then leaning back against it with a sigh. At some point since returning to the apartment building, Rosemary had removed her jacket and the colorful ascot she’d been wearing during the day and had undone the top few buttons of her prim blouse… and the hint of cleavage this had uncovered left Karl’s mind lingering again on how damned attractive he found her.

And how she was definitely off limits.


	11. Prodigal Mice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No smut. More unnecessary flirting. Rosemary makes a pass at Adriane.

January 24th, 1989

  
Rosemary had been woken up at 3 a.m. by a call from Dr. Pryce, who needed a hand on some of the adjustments for her latest set of prototype eyes. By the time they were sitting properly in their sockets and providing all the input Pryce had hoped they would, it was late enough that Rosemary decided to head up to Dr. Kelley’s lab and take care of the mice before it was time to go haul Dr. Kelley in to work. 

She paused outside of Dr. Weiss’s lab and knocked gently. “Still alive in there, Weiss?”

“Doing splendidly, Rosemary,” came the deep rumble of his voice through the door. “Good results so far, though I look forward to when it will be safe enough to emerge for coffee.”

“Glad to hear it. And I’ll have Charles put a thermos outside your door when he gets in,” she called back. Weiss’s fervent “Engelein!” followed her as she continued down the hall to Kelley’s lab.

The mice were mostly asleep, and although a few woke and scampered about when she turned on the lights in the glass-fronted enclosure that held all their individual cages, most remained drowsy as she pulled them out one-by-one, settling each in a small plastic box for the time it took to clean its cage out. “Let’s see,” she muttered to herself as she looked the list on the front of the enclosure over. “Stool samples, blood samples, regular dry diet for everyone, distilled water in the bottles.” She smiled indulgently down at the mice. “And fresh pine chips for everyone.”

Rosemary made quick work of the cages, labeling the samples with the number of the mouse that they belonged to. One of the numbers on the cages had been crossed out and had been labeled, in wax pencil, with PM, much to Rosemary’s confusion, until halfway through the cages she remembered her off-hand comment about a prodigal mouse from the night before and laughed.

It had been years since she’d done work of this sort in a lab, but Rosemary’s hands remembered the actions, and it was easy to fall into a mindless pattern. Scoop the mouse out, check carefully for abrasions, take a temperature, a blood sample, prep the slide, weigh the mouse, record everything, mark the lot with the date and time of observation. Sequester the mouse in a clean little box, select a stool sample from the cage, bag it, label it. Dump the waste from the bottom of the cage, sluice it off, stick it in the machine that dried it in an instant, fill the bottom with pine chips, return the mouse. Swap to a fresh pair of gloves and begin again. She was on the last mouse when she happened to glance up at the clock on the wall. Quarter past eight.

“Damn.” She scooped the mouse out of the box she’d had it in for safekeeping and dumped it back in its cage, returning it to its row in the glass enclosure. “Time for me to go fetch your lord and master from his bed, children.”

Rosemary disposed of her gloves and went to close the enclosure up, but paused there for a moment, looking down at the mice. The prodigal mouse was roaming her cage, fluffing the fresh pine chips into little mounds, and then suddenly she stopped to groom her whiskers, and Rosemary was overwhelmed with a sense of deja vu, remembering the night before when she'd stood here side by side with Dr. Kelley, watching the mouse do the same thing.

After this past weekend with Al, Rosemary shouldn't have had room in her brain for fond thoughts of anyone else at all. But she still stood there, frozen in place until the mouse finished grooming herself and went back to messing with the pine chips, Rosemary’s subconscious providing the image and warmth of Dr. Kelley’s presence beside her. As the mouse fluffed up another pile of pine chips, Rosemary shook her head, trying to clear it, and sighed. “That is really going to be a problem,” she said to the cages.

“What is going to be problem?” came Dr. Kelley’s voice from behind her. Rosemary viciously stomped her startle reflex into submission. She must not have heard him enter the lab because the glass enclosure had its own air supply, which had been working double-time all morning to keep up while she'd been cleaning cages, that was all. He hadn’t meant to sneak up on her.

Dr. Kelley appeared at her side, looking the cages over. “Is something wrong with mice?”

Rosemary forced out a fake little laugh.“Oh, no. I was just telling these fine creatures about the day I have ahead of me. They're excellent listeners.”

Dr. Kelley gave her a somewhat incredulous look, and Rosemary smiled blandly up at him. “Prepped slides are in the first fridge, along with stool samples. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me, but I’ll be back tonight to take care of feeding them, and I’ll send Charles up with any notes I have on your proposal.” She paused for a moment, and considered. Weiss wouldn’t emerge from his lab for another five hours or so and would probably collapse into bed shortly after, Solomon and Falk both had a couple of busy weeks ahead of them, and Gao… well, Gao didn’t do well with solo introductions. “I think tomorrow I’ll send you off to lunch with a couple of the other scientists on this floor. Get you introduced to your coworkers.”

“And will you be joining us?”

Rosemary forced another light little laugh out. “Oh, no. I think you’ll make much better progress without me hovering over you all like a mother hen.” She shut the door to the glass enclosure. “Now, I’ll be in my office for most of the day, and the number’s right by the lab phone, along with the number for Charles’ office. If you need me for something and can’t find me, try him next, all right? He can always get me on my pager.”

Dr. Kelley nodded stiffly, and Rosemary smiled up at him once more, then maneuvered around him and made a beeline for the door to the lab. She paused halfway out it to shoot a “And don’t forget to eat lunch!” back at Dr. Kelley.

He rolled his eyes. “Da, mama.”

“Don’t you sass me, boy,” Rosemary shot back before whirling out the door of the lab and heading down the hall towards the door to the stairs. As the door to the lab swung shut behind her, she heard Dr. Kelley’s bark of laughter, and for just a moment, it brought a real smile to her face.

Karl stood watching the mice through the glass front of their enclosure for he wasn't sure how long after Rosemary had left his lab. He'd realized a short while after eight that she either wasn't coming to his apartment for him, or that something had delayed her. So he had decided to make his own way to the lab complex that morning, now that he seemed to have learned which paths to take.

He had been a little startled to find Rosemary in his lab, talking to the mice. Not that he'd forgotten her promise to be on mouse duty, but when she hadn’t shown up at his apartment door that morning, he had assumed that he was entirely on his own for the day. He had passed a few people on his way to the lab complex, all of them obviously out and about on tasks of their own, but the campus had been mostly still and quiet, giving the impression that everyone who worked there was already locked up in one building or another, hard at work. No one he’d passed had bothered to give him more than a cursory glance, obviously deciding for themselves that he had the authorization to be where he was, and no one had taken the time to greet him by so much as a nod of the head.

Focused. Intent. That was the impression that everyone Karl had encountered so far at Goddard gave. Until Karl had made that young man cry—what was his name, again? Andrew—both of his lab techs had been completely professional and utterly focused on what they were doing, and after Andrew had fled the lab, Aditi had continued on with her work with the mice as if Andrew had not given in to hysterics. Even Rosemary, for all that she seemed to be overly cheerful and was a tremendous flirt, gave off the impression that some small part of her mind was always searching for the next task, the next item on an internal to-do list.

So finding Rosemary in his lab, having a little chat with the mice… well. Despite the fact that he had been dwelling on her—or at least her physical appearance—far more often than he should have since he had met her, the sight of her had been a shock to his system. Finding her taking a relaxed moment to have a chat with lab animals, with no indication that she was about to rush off to some other task, had been strangely endearing, for all that it did not do to attach undue sentiment to lab animals.

Her suit today was a deep purple, the blouse under it a warm gold, a patterned kerchief tied under her chin. The bright colors turned an outfit that should have made her seem stuffy into one that leant her an air of nonchalance, of approachability, which, given her job, was probably the point. And of course, like every other suit he’d seen her wear, it was tailored close to the curve of her lower back, emphasizing the slope from her waist to her well-rounded rear in a way that left him wanting to press his hand there every time he was close to her.

Karl groaned and let his forehead fall gently against the glass front of the mouse enclosure. Perhaps in a week or two, she would become part of the background noise of the lab complex and therefore easy to ignore. Perhaps in a week or two, his priorities would shift back to what they should be, and he could get down to work without wondering what Rosemary would think of this or that.

He shouldn’t be wondering such things; he’d met the woman, what, four days ago? Five? He hadn’t even thought that much of her on first sight, seeing only a short, dumpy black woman who obviously relied too much on cosmetics.

But then she’d been kind to him, when no doubt she knew very little of him beyond his research and whatever personal data on him that Mr. Carter had passed her way. And then she’d taken him to her office and had ripped his research into shreds. Karl should have resented her for that, and he might have, too, if she’d just dictated at him, but instead… instead she had asked questions. The sort of questions he would have expected a research partner to ask, though Kostya had only rarely asked such questions of him. The sort of questions that made it clear she knew what she was asking about, and why she was asking this particular thing.

The sort of questions that had him imagining her voice all day yesterday, as he’d typed up his new proposal for moving forward with the research on the Koschei Bessmertnyy virus. No, no, Decima, he must remember to use the new name.

“Tell me why you’re doing it that way,” that voice that sounded like Rosemary had said inside his head as he worked. “Is there a more efficient method of achieving the same means? Have you considered this other technique? If you’ve discounted it, why won’t it do the job as well as the method you’ve chosen?”

It should have been annoying, that voice in his head. But it had been comforting instead.

He lifted his forehead from the glass and frowned at the smudge it had left there. Eventually, he located cleaning supplies under one of the sinks and wiped the glass down before getting on with his work.

Karl had hoped that the slides Rosemary had prepared, two per mouse, would be contaminated or damaged or less-than-perfect in some way. But he only had to resort to the second slide twice out of twenty-four mice to get an accurate idea of what was going on with each specimen.

Was the damn woman competent at everything?

And why did he find that competence so attractive?

Rosemary settled down at her desk with the desperately needed cup of coffee Charles had handed her as soon as she’d reached the admin floor and the floppy containing Dr. Kelley’s completed research proposal. As she waited for the computer to boot up, she sipped the coffee and went over the memos that had been waiting in the file holder on her door, plus the letters Charles had handed off to her before she’d sent him off to plant a thermos outside of Weiss’s door.

Mr. Carter wanted a run-down on Kelley’s research as soon as possible. Well, that one wasn’t a surprise. And he also wanted the results of Weiss’s current observation cycle as soon as they were available, which probably meant a late evening of typing up the scientist’s incredibly sloppy notes. Then, of course, there was the end of the month coming up soon, which meant a whole slew of other reports and what was always a particularly fraught meeting with Carter. A meeting she expected to be even more fraught than usual this month if he continued to insist that she was already over-budget for the year, when she knew for a fact that the allocations for lab equipment came out of a completely different budget than the salaries for lab techs.

She tapped a brown manila envelope labeled only “Kelley’s first bonus: award at own discretion” with a fingernail a few times, frowning, then opened it. Ah. A government report, no doubt intercepted by one of their operatives in Russia. “In the matter of the death of Comrade Vologin and the destruction of his research, Comrade Kinski has been found guilty and has been removed from his position within the party.”

Rosemary smiled a grim little smile, and shoved the report back into the envelope. No doubt this Kinski would find himself in one of the more unpleasant Russian prisons for the foreseeable future. The gulag system had officially ended several decades ago, but Rosemary knew that some of the prisons in Russia weren’t so much different than those labor camps had been.

She considered the envelope for another moment, then shook her head and set it aside for now. Best to save it for when Dr. Kelley had really earned it.

Or for the next time she needed to remind Dr. Kelley exactly how much Mr. Carter had given him, when Carter had brought Kelley into Goddard’s fold.

And how much Carter took, a little voice in her head provided.

Rosemary shook her head to clear it and settled down to work her way through Kelley’s research proposal, a pad of paper at the ready for any remaining notes she might have.

To her surprise, Rosemary emerged at the other end of the proposal with only a few notes on the pad, minor changes in wording that had no real effect on the actual contents. Instead of sending them up to Kelley she simply went back through and implemented them herself. It was the work of minutes to select the portions relevant to Carter, a mere half-hour to add necessary context, and then… and then she was done, in a quarter of the time she’d allotted for the task. Frowning, she read over the proposal again, but no, Dr. Kelley had apparently taken all of her suggestions to heart, and, in the few areas she hadn’t offered any changes, he seemed to have asked himself “What information would Rosemary want clarification on?” to great effect.

“Well,” she muttered at her computer screen. “First time that’s happened.”

She printed a copy of her report on Kelley’s research off for Carter and stuffed it in a manila envelope, marked for immediate delivery, then picked up her coffee and took a sip, wincing. It had gone stone cold over the past hour, but she drank the rest of the cup down anyway.

After all, she still had those end-of-the-month reports to get started on.

Karl finished inspecting the mouse droppings as well, then disposed of everything that counted as a biohazard in the container marked for it. He wanted to get on with manufacturing a new batch of Decima before his remaining samples degraded entirely, but he had no idea where to get the supplies for it.

“Epps,” Rosemary’s voice was curt as she answered her office phone.

“Ah, Rosemary. I was wondering… I wish to manufacture more of retrovirus. Where can I get petri dishes and cell cultures?”

“Check the second fridge,” came Rosemary’s response, her tone a little less frigid. “There should be established cell cultures there. Mouse, rat, rabbit, cow, human, and I think there might be some chimpanzee in there too.”

Karl blinked in surprise. “Thank you. That sounds, uh…”

“Splendid?”

“Excessive.”

“Well, anything worth doing is worth doing well, and anything worth doing well is worth going completely over the top on,” Rosemary said in a tone of voice that left Karl certain she was mocking something Mr. Carter had said.

“I am not certain that is true,” muttered Karl, who had discovered that the phone cord stretched far enough to get over to the second refrigerator and was now looking down on a truly vast supply of cell cultures. “But thank you. How long will these be viable for—oh.”

“Saw the dates?”

“Da.”

“Need anything else?”

“Some assistance would be appreciated, if Aditi is free later today.”

“I don’t know that she will be, but… well, I could use a break from end-of-month reports. Want me to come up and lend a hand?”

Karl found himself thinking of the way he’d come across Rosemary that morning, standing in front of the mouse enclosure, the perfect curve of her lower back taunting him from across the lab. He flushed, intending to decline her assistance… but no, this would go much faster if he had a second set of hands, and if the slides Rosemary had prepared that morning were any indication, she’d probably be excellent at the job. And, he thought hopefully, the more he saw her, the more likely it would be that he would become accustomed to the effect she had on him.

“That… that would be good,” he managed to stammer out after an uncomfortably long pause.

“I assure you, I was a lab tech for nearly a decade. I do know what I’m doing.”

“I believe you!”

“It’s just you didn’t sound sure.” Rosemary’s voice had turned warm and teasing. “Were my slides really that much of a mess? You didn’t have to re-do any of them, did you?”

Karl snorted at that. “As if you did not know that they were perfect,” he shot back.

There was a silence from Rosemary’s end this time, and then she said, in a slow, careful voice, “I’ll be up there in five minutes, assuming my check-in with Charles doesn’t unearth any problems. Get everything prepped?”

Karl barely had time to say “Of course,” before the phone line went dead. He went back to the refrigerator and started pulling out what they’d need to get started. It wouldn’t hurt to try and manufacture a larger amount of the retrovirus than necessary; it was always a bit touch-and-go, getting Decima to thrive outside a living being.

He was all set up when Rosemary bustled in to the lab, a plastic smock covering her coat and a pair of lab goggles hanging from her neck. She made a beeline for the box of gloves and pulled a pair on, then shot him a big grin that almost made it to her eyes. “Shall we?”

They worked quietly, each at a separate table. Karl tried to be surprised that it seemed like Rosemary was finishing up three cell cultures in the time it took him to do two, but couldn’t quite bring himself to be. After all, he had normally left this part of the work to Kostya and their lab techs back in Russia. It was something he’d only ever done at times when everyone was out of the lab, when he’d been there far later than he ought to have been due to a late-night brainstorm.

Rosemary silently took half the cultures remaining in front of him when she finished before he did, and then they put the whole lot into the incubation chamber. She stripped her gloves off and tossed them aside, then stretched her arms over her head, her back popping loudly as she did.

“Lunch time, I think,” she said. “Well, lunch time for you. Time for me to head back to my office and get back to those reports.”

“You have already eaten?”

“No, but if Charles values his skin, he remembered to save me a sandwich today from the stuff the cafeteria sent over.”

“And if he did not, would you go to lunch with me?” Karl snapped his mouth shut as the final word slipped out, suddenly, painfully aware that he’d been using a coaxing, flirtatious tone of voice that was completely inappropriate for someone he worked with, no matter how attractive he found her.

Rosemary shot him a sharp look, but didn’t comment. “If Charles forgot, then I guess I’m eating flayed assistant for lunch.” She shut her eyes and twisted her head back and forth, popping that as well. “Or ramen. I’ve got a packet or two in my desk.”

“A choice only marginally superior to cannibalism,” Karl found himself muttering.

Rosemary let out a snort of laughter at that, then turned away from him and headed towards the door to his lab, waving a hand over her shoulder at him. “Go eat a proper lunch, you!”

She was gone before Karl had a chance to shoot another retort her way, and some small part of him wanted to follow her, to see if he could get her to laugh, to smile another of those smiles that went all the way to her eyes.

Instead, he waited until he was sure she would have had time to get down the stairs to her office before leaving the lab himself.  
  


Rosemary was finishing off the last of the sandwich Charles had saved for her for lunch when there was a brisk knock on the door to her office, followed by Dr. Weiss opening the door. He had dark circles under his eyes and looked about ready to fall over.

“Rosemary. I'm for bed.”

Rosemary frowned and removed her reading glasses, letting them drop to her chest. “Your notes?”

“Damn. No. Still in the lab. I'll go back and get them.”

Rosemary hauled herself to her feet and bustled around her desk, grabbing Dr. Weiss by the elbow before he could leave the room. “Oh, no you don't. You've been awake for 36 hours. You go to bed. I can fetch them.”

“Ah, meine Liebe, if I were not humid in temperament I would court you most assiduously.” Weiss smiled his kind, wrinkled smile down at her.

Rosemary rolled her eyes. “If only being gay as the day is long stopped you from flirting with poor impressionable young misses like myself.” She guided Weiss out to the hallway and turned to lock her office door. “Anyway, I'm not doing it out of the kindness of my heart. I'm putting you in charge of babysitting Gao tomorrow at lunch.”

Weiss blinked sleepily. “Is there some event I have forgotten to put on my calendar?” he rumbled.

“No, I'm adding something to your schedule. Lunch with the new guy.” Rosemary pushed through the door to the stairwell and paused on the landing with Weiss at her side.

“Ah, the elusive Russian has arrived at last?”

“Who else?”

Weiss frowned. “Well, Engelein, I shall do my best with Edwina, but you know she does not like strangers at the best of times. And Russian strangers…”

“Even less, I know. Your best is all I'm asking.” Rosemary sighed. “I figure you've got the best chance of anyone where Gao is concerned.”

“What about Sarah?”

“She’s working with Dominguez for the next few weeks.”

“Ah, yes. Well.” Dr. Weiss shut his eyes, looking very old and tired for a moment.

“Go to bed,” Rosemary said, patting him carefully on the shoulder. “I’ll do a final check on your lab and get your notes.”

“Don’t touch the—”

“I know, Weiss! Bed. Now.”

“Yes, yes.”

Dr. Weiss made his way down the stairs, waving a tired good-bye over his shoulder to Rosemary, and she made her way to his lab on the fifth floor. Of course, she’d only just gathered up the notes when she got a page from Charles with the code for Dominguez, so she stopped off on the fourth floor on the way back to her office. Both Dominguez and Falk looked up when Rosemary entered the lab.

“What’s up?”

Dr. Falk sighed. “I need my old notes from the Janus for this.”

Rosemary winced. “You know those got put away under a higher clearance level than you technically have access to.”

“I know, though why I can’t get access to my own damn results! It’s not like I don’t know what happened.” Falk sighed again, then rubbed a hand over her close-cropped silver hair. “See what you can get out of Adriane? I’d ask Janet, but she doesn’t have your way with the woman.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Rosemary said. “Anything else while I’m here?”

Falk shook her head. “Nah. Just whatever you can get of my notes as soon as you can get them.”

Rosemary suppressed a sigh of annoyance. If she had to spend her afternoon wrangling Adriane, she would definitely be in the office late into the night in order to put together a report on Weiss’s findings. And that was assuming his results didn’t have any definitive proof of a Theta Scenario—no. He would have said something before leaving the lab complex, no matter how exhausted he was. So just a tedious evening of deciphering his handwriting, then. “Page me if you need me, then,” she said, whirling back out of the lab.

Adriane was more than a little irritated with Rosemary’s request. “Half of those notes are in the Black and not coming back you, you realize.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And the rest…”

Rosemary sighed. “Just redact for yellow clearance, all right? That’s what Dominguez is at. Aditi as well. I’ll wrangle Falk if she protests.”

Adriane nodded, and considered for a moment. “It will take an hour.”

“I’ll go get my latest shipment of papers off of Florence and start this week’s reading, then,” Rosemary called after Adriane.

When Adriane returned to her office, Rosemary had balanced herself improbably on one of the guest chairs, her heels off, her feet tucked up under her, the reading glasses she kept on a chain around her neck balanced on her nose as she read her way through one of the papers that must have been part of Florence’s weekly delivery of scientific articles.

“This will take some time,” Adriane said deliberately.

Rosemary glanced at Adriane over the top of her glasses. “I’ve been up and about since three this morning with not nearly enough coffee. Like hell am I trekking all the way back to the lab complex to turn around and come straight back here.”

“Perhaps you would like a reading room of your own?”

“I’ll fall asleep.”

“And you will not in here?”

“Oh, no, these chairs are far too uncomfortable,” Rosemary said with a little laugh.

Adriane frowned, but as long as Rosemary wasn’t too much of a pest, Adriane would be able to get on with her redactions just as well with the other woman in the room as she would alone.

Not that Rosemary could ever be relied upon to not be a pest.

Four papers and an hour later, Rosemary sighed and stretched. The spare chairs in Adriane’s office really were astoundingly uncomfortable, but it turned out she was so tired she’d been on the verge of dozing off anyway.

She knew that Adriane would prefer her to go pester Florence, if Rosemary needed to pester someone in order to stay awake, but Rosemary didn’t know Florence well enough to ask the question that had been stuck in the back of her mind since earlier that afternoon.

“Do I give off ‘Please flirt with me, gay men’ vibes?”

One of Adriane’s eyebrows ticked upwards an infinitesimal amount, a sure sign that she was either interested or annoyed, but she didn't answer or look up from the document she was redacting.

“I mean, Weiss was bad enough, but Marya…”

Adriane kept her eyes locked on the paper in front of her, her hands moving so quickly they seemed to blur, at least from Rosemary’s perspective.

After a long silence, Adriane seemed to realize that Rosemary was waiting for an answer of some sort. “I thought you enjoyed Weiss flirting with you.”

Rosemary bit her lower lip, then decided she might as well go all-in. After all, it wasn't like she had anyone to talk to about this, at least not until the next time Al had a free evening, and god only knew when that would be. “I don't find Weiss attractive.”

“You find yourself attracted to Vologin?”

“Yes,” came Rosemary’s blunt response. “Very much.”

This got Rosemary the briefest flicker of a judgmental look from Adriane.

“I know,” Rosemary said with a sigh. “But it's not like I can exactly control who I'm attracted to.”

“You could stop yourself from flirting back,” Adriane said, her tone exceptionally dry, even for Adriane.

“Oh, Liebchen, you know I'll never manage that. It's instinct.” The words were out of Rosemary’s mouth before she had a chance to consider them.

Adriane let out an irritable little huff. “Given the way you cannot seem to resist flirting with me…”

“Yes, well, you I keep hoping I’ll manage to seduce some day,” Rosemary shot back. “How about it, Adriane? Want to make a go of it?”

This actually got Adriane’s attention, her full attention, for a long moment, and then Adriane shook her head and turned back to her redactions. “Even if you were truly interested—and I think you are not—you know why that would not work, Rosmarin.”

Rosemary frowned. “Just because Pryce—”

“I do not want to talk about it.”

“Even given what…”

Adriane glared, but Rosemary soldiered on.

“You’re not unlovable, Adriane,” she said softly.

“You are assuming I wish to be loved.” Adriane threw down her marker and straightened the pile of paper in front of her before shoving it into a file folder and shoving it across the desk in Rosemary’s direction. “Here. Dr. Falk’s notes.”

Rosemary shoved her shoes back on, gathered up her pile of articles, then took the file folder from the edge of Adriane’s desk. “Thanks, Liebchen.”

There was the briefest nod of acknowledgement from Adriane before she turned to her computer, and Rosemary sighed and turned to leave. Well. That had gone well.

“Rosmarin?”

Rosemary paused in the doorway and glanced over her shoulder. “Yes?”

“The flirting is part of your charm. Do not give it up.”

Rosemary beamed across the office at Adriane. “You think I’m charming?”

Adriane rolled her eyes. “Not at all, you dreadful woman. Now get out of my office.”

Rosemary saluted saucily in Adriane’s direction and sailed out of the archives, grinning.

They were still friends.


	12. Look, there’s implied masturbation in this chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little smutty, both overheard and the aforementioned masturbation.

Early March, 1989

  
Karl woke in the middle of the night, unsure at first about what had disturbed him. His sleep schedule was almost normal by now, though he knew that within a week or two he’d have some brainstorm that would keep him in the lab half the night and send it all to pieces again. Still, he had been sleeping the night through just fine for nearly three weeks, so why had he woken now?

And then he heard it, the murmur of voices through the wall his bedroom shared with Rosemary’s apartment, a low giggle that must have been Rosemary, a man’s deep voice answering her. And then, a little shriek that turned into laughter that sank, after a moment, into a passionate moan, and then another, and the distinctive rhythmic sound of a bed frame thumping against a wall, the sort of noises that could only be the result of one activity.

Karl shut his eyes and sighed. Of course. Her partner must have returned. The man had visited Rosemary early on, during Karl’s first few days at Goddard Futuristics, but he had not returned since; it had been more than a month since Rosemary had last had the man in her bed. Some small part of Karl had been wondering what her partner must be thinking, to leave Rosemary alone for so long.

He had figured out quickly that there was nothing to Rosemary’s flirtatious manner, that it was just one of the many tools she used to whip the scientists under her supervision into compliance. But that hadn’t stopped him from forgetting every once in a while, from smiling and flirting back, especially since most of the rest of the scientists in the building seemed to hold him in suspicion, and Rosemary was the only person who ever smiled at him.

Well, that was not strictly true—Charles, Rosemary’s assistant, would smile at Karl, but Charles always seemed to be forcing his smiles to his face, the bland, pleasant smiles of someone trying not to anger their superior. Rosemary’s smiles, on the other hand…

Karl sighed again. He had hoped, he realized. That was the problem. He had taken her smiles and her gentle, friendly flirting as a sign that maybe she wouldn’t be unreceptive, and he had given in to the urge to flirt back, and he had hoped. Hoped that, for the first time in years, he might have met someone who was genuinely interested in him, as he was, flaws and all. Hoped that, despite the fact that they worked together, despite the fact that he had known she already had someone she took to her bed, there might still be room for something more around the edges.

As she had been last time, Rosemary was very vocal in her arousal, and Karl tried to shut out the noises from next door. He succeeded for a few moments, but then a little scream from Rosemary brought Karl’s attention to the noises coming through his bedroom wall again. The sound of movement lost its rhythm, slowed, and stopped, and there were more giggles and the sound of a deep voice heard through the wall. And then, there was silence.

Karl should have been able to set the incident aside and fall asleep again, but instead he found himself imagining what it must be like in that room right now. Imagining Rosemary, sweat beaded on her skin, her breath coming hard and fast. Imagining her body warm against his, imagining… ah, what was the use of imagining?

He did not know, but he could not seem to help it, and he cursed that fact.

So for just a little while, he gave his imagination free rein and wrapped his hand around his cock, and did what he could to bring himself relief.

Karl almost didn’t hear the door of Rosemary’s apartment, opening and closing, the sound of the man’s heavy footsteps in the hall of the apartment complex, but the noises broke through the haze he was in, sudden indignation on Rosemary’s behalf shattering his arousal. Just like that, the man was going to leave?

He thought back to the last time he’d heard Rosemary’s partner with her, and frowned. The man had left just as quickly that time as well.


	13. Snippets from April 1989

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No smut, a few candid conversations.

“Mr. Carter wants to do a three-month review with you,” Rosemary said at the end of their start-of-week meeting.

Karl swallowed and suppressed a sudden urge of anxiety. “When?”

“Friday.” Rosemary tilted her head to one side and considered him for a moment. “I can insist on sitting in on it, if you’d like backup.”

Karl opened his mouth to decline her offer, but realized as he did that Rosemary probably had far more experience handling the volatile head of communications than Karl did. “That would be appreciated.”

Rosemary gave him a humorless little smile. “I’ll tell Carter you want me on hand in case you can’t think of the right words in English. As a translator.”

Karl frowned. “Will he believe that?”

Rosemary shrugged. “I don’t think it matters whether he believes it or not, but if you’d like to slip in something particularly rude in Russian when Carter gets nasty, I won’t say a word.”

“Do you think he is likely to get nasty?”

Rosemary laughed at that, and Karl thought it was even a real laugh. “When isn’t that man nasty? Though I suppose you don’t have the experience with him that I do.”

“Why did you not tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“That my lab is bugged.”

Rosemary shot him a sharp look. “I don’t think I should have needed to. Carter recruited you himself, after all. Surely you realized he’s the sort to keep a close eye on those he employs.”

She had a point, as loathe as Karl was to admit it. But still, it threw him off balance, that she hadn’t let him know that everything he said in his lab was recorded and reported on. “Is my apartment bugged as well?” he asked irritably.

“…just the living room,” Rosemary said after a long silence.

“Where else?”

“I honestly couldn’t say.” Rosemary’s tone was nonchalant, but in a studied, careful fashion that left Karl certain she was lying. She stopped suddenly, and he came to a halt too, turning to look at her. She looked him right in the eye, a serious expression on her face. “You signed away your privacy when you came here, Dr. Kelley. You’ll get used to it in time.” Rosemary let out a harsh little laugh, then continued. “The benefits, after all, are excellent.”


	14. Hilbert gets a red hat with a pompom (and later uses it)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No smut. Some comfort. Unnecessary flirting continues.

July 19th, 1989

Karl hunched over the medical-grade microscope in his lab, shivering a bit. He’d added a lab coat to his attire before starting this observation cycle, but since the current part of the cycle he was in required the temperature in the lab to be close to freezing, the lab coat wasn’t quite enough.

There was still enough of the Russian in him to shove his awareness of the cold to the back of his mind, but six months in the muggy swamp that was Florida had thinned his blood somewhat, and what would have once been a minor discomfort and easily discounted was now a constant annoyance hovering in the back of his mind.

Still, he focused in on the observation cycle, blocking the world around him out, focusing only on the action on the magnified slide, on the notes he was taking with fingers that were stiff and cold. He didn’t even notice the sound of his lab door opening, barely registered it when the top of his head and the tips of his ears were suddenly enveloped in warmth. The back of his neck followed, and then his subconscious was responding to Rosemary’s demand of “Left hand,” followed by “Right hand,” until both hands were warm up to the fingertips. He only really registered what happened when she tucked his pen back into his hand and there was the tap of her heels on the linoleum as she made her way back to the door of his lab.

He lifted his head away from the microscope and stared at his hands in confusion; they’d gained a pair of thick red fingerless gloves. A cursory glance at his chest revealed a scarf in the same bright red, an exploratory poke at the top of his head found a hat… with a pompom, he realized, a little bemused. “What on earth…?”

“You’re welcome!” Rosemary’s voice called out from near the door, followed by “Now back to work, Dr. Kelley.”

Karl shrugged and hunched over the microscope again, but try as he might, he couldn’t suppress the little smile that had made its way to his face.

After the observation cycle was over, he went to Rosemary’s office to try and return the garments, but she shook her head and refused them. “I’ve got plenty of spares for the folks who get rid of all their winter gear when they move to Florida and then freeze their asses off in the labs,” she said. “They’re a gift. Keep them in your lab.”

“All right,” he said, looking down at the pile of bright red garments he’d set on the desk. “You would not happen to have something in a different color? Only, this is a bit… intense. And I am not certain how I feel about the pompom. I do not think I am the pompom sort.”

“What ingratitude,” Rosemary said, a smile on her face and a laugh in her voice. “And no, unless you prefer lime green or… oh, what color would you call this?” She leaned down and opened a drawer in her desk, one of the deep ones on the bottom, and pulled out a hat that registered to Karl as nothing so much as piss yellow.

“I do not think I should say,” he muttered.

“Exactly,” Rosemary said, tossing the hat back into the drawer. “Red is fine?”

“It is acceptable, given the alternatives,” Karl said.

“Was there anything else?”

“Ah, yes,” Karl said, remembering suddenly the other reason he’d come to Rosemary’s office. “Observation cycle was promising, and the lab rats seem to be tolerating this version of Decima much better. I may be ready for a human subject in another month, perhaps two.”

Rosemary nodded. “I’ll start looking around for, ah… volunteers, then,” she said, and Karl wondered what sort of thoughts that little pause concealed.

“Very well. I will keep you informed of progress in current test subjects.”

“Sounds good,” Rosemary said, her attention already caught by something on her computer screen. “I’ll want enough information to make a full report to Carter in two or three weeks, all right?”

Karl nodded, then said “Of course,” when it was evident that Rosemary was no longer paying the slightest amount of attention to him. He scooped the pile of winter gear back up off Rosemary’s desk and left her office, but couldn’t quite resist pausing at the door to look back at her. She had a little frown between her eyebrows and her fingers were flying across the keyboard, though as he watched she paused long enough to rub a hand over the back of her neck, looking, for just a moment, surprisingly weary and strangely alone.

Karl had realized, over the past six months, that Rosemary would do whatever was necessary to take care of her scientists.

But right now, he was wondering whether anyone really ever took care of her.

December 22nd, 1989

It was snowing in Florida.

Karl Kelley stared out the front door of the lab complex in astonishment. How long had it been since he'd seen snow? It felt like forever, but of course, it had been less than a year.

It was even accumulating, though not much. He thought, all told, that they might get an inch or two if they were lucky.

He heard a little throat-clearing noise to one side of him and glanced over to see Rosemary had joined him in staring out at the weather.

“Everyone’s going to go hog-wild over this stuff one way or another, so if you want to play in the snow you should get out there now,” she said, shooting him a friendly smile.

“How did you know I would be here?” he asked, turning back to the snowy landscape outside.

Rosemary shrugged. “You don't have windows in your lab, and this is where you always seem to end up when exciting weather is happening,” she said. “So I thought I'd let you know to enjoy it while it lasts. I know I’d like to.”

Karl gave Rosemary’s face a longer look at that. She looked almost like a child who was being denied a treat of some sort. “Come out and enjoy it with me,” he said before he could think better of it. It was a little too close to flirting, and he’d told himself months ago not to flirt with this woman. Because she was the sort who would flirt back, meaning it in a friendly fashion, and that would only lead to pain when he received yet another reminder that she already had a partner.

“No thank you. Some of us have work to do,” she shot back tartly, along with a startled glance.

“The snow cannot wait until tomorrow,” he said, putting forth all his persuasive ability. “Can you say the same for your work?”

Rosemary gave the snow another longing glance. “There's nothing immediately pressing, but the end of the quarter is coming up. And you know the way this lab operates. A good day is one where all the emergencies are minor.”

“I have heard you say once or twice that you wish to give your assistant more responsibility. Do not minor emergencies count?” Karl didn't know why he was trying so hard to persuade Rosemary to come out into the snow with him… except yes, he did. Because he wanted to enjoy the snow with someone, because for a little while he wanted to not feel as alone as he’d felt over the past year, as he adjusted to living in a new country where more than a few people had decided to hate him the moment they heard his accent.

Because even though he knew she had a partner, there was something alive about Rosemary that drew him in and made him feel the same way, and for just a little while he wanted to feel alive too.

“You have a pager, you know,” he added as a final argument, as her longing look as she stared out at the snow didn't change. “Your assistant will be able to contact you if you are needed. Come take a walk in the snow with me.”

“This is a terrible idea,” he thought he heard her mutter, and then she sighed. “All right. Let me just run up to my office and talk to Charles. And I'll suggest that you fetch that cold weather gear I gave you for your lab—you're probably not acclimated to Siberian winters any more.”

“One’s blood does not thin so much in a single year,” he said in a mock dignified tone.

“Dr. Kelley,” Rosemary said in a warning tone.

“Very well. I will also put on lab coat, if that will satisfy your urge to mother me.”

Rosemary let out an exasperated sigh. “Yes, I suppose it will. See you back here in ten minutes?”

“Of course.”

They parted ways, and ten minutes later they were both back at the front door. Rosemary had tucked her hair beneath a lime-green wooly hat and had added a scarf and the sort of mittens that converted into fingerless gloves. He glanced down. She was still wearing her usual skirt and pantyhose, but she appeared to have replaced her heels with rain boots.

“Is that the gear you offered me instead of this?” Karl asked, gesturing up at the red hat with a pom pom that adorned his own head as they pushed out through the doors into air that wasn't exactly frigid, but was noticeably cold. 

“Mm-hm,” came Rosemary’s response, sounding distracted, her face lighting up in delight as she stared up at the falling snow and crunched—well, no, with the rain boots it was more of a squeaking noise—through the thin layer of snow on the ground.

Karl’s glasses had fogged up almost immediately as they'd gone outside, but he looked over the top of them at Rosemary, unwilling to miss a moment of her delight, even if it wasn't directed at him. “They suit you much better than they would have me,” he said, and she shot him another of those startled glances.

He didn't know what he was doing. Well, flirting, obviously, in an awkward sort of way, but it wasn't as if he could justify the action. Still, he could not seem to stop himself.

Not where Rosemary was concerned.


	15. In which it is established that Rosemary is An Older Woman (and Hilbert is touch-starved but also horny for her)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No smut. Some Cutter being a bitch.

March 5th, 1990

Karl knocked cautiously on Rosemary’s half-open office door to get her attention. She was hunched over, hammering away at her keyboard, glaring at her computer screen over a pair of bright red reading glasses—with rhinestones, he noted, appalled—and he’d learned some months ago that walking in to her office without knocking when she was concentrating on something was a remarkably perilous action.

She straightened up a bit in her chair at his knock and called “Enter!”, but her glare didn’t shift from the computer screen in front of her. He made his way cautiously over to her desk, edging around the visitor chairs, the file folder he was there to deliver clasped protectively in front of him.

“I have research proposal you wanted.”

“Good boy. Give it here.” Rosemary reached out and took the file folder from him, set it in a in-tray on the other side of the computer, and went back to abusing her keyboard, executing this maneuver without once looking in his direction. Karl turned to leave the room, then turned back, opening and closing his mouth a few times as he tried to find the right words for what he wanted to say. After a moment, Rosemary glanced up at him over the top of her glasses. “Was there something else, Doctor Kelley?”

Karl felt his mouth stretch into a sort of grimace. “It is just… I do not understand why you always call me boy.”

Rosemary looked mildly surprised. “Do I?”

Karl straightened out his mouth-well, yes, he was frowning, but it was better than grimacing, he thought-and rubbed a hand nervously across the back of his head instead. “Yes. It is somewhat… disconcerting. You must be several years younger than I am-” A burst of laughter from Rosemary cut him off, and he stared blankly at her for the several very long seconds it took for her to stop laughing. “What…?”

Rosemary took one look at his face and let out another, somewhat undignified snort of laughter. “Your estimate of my age is flatteringly low.”

Karl eyed her cautiously, searching her face for signs of age. She doesn’t look as if she could be much older than forty, but perhaps… “Do not say you are the same age as me.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to go a little bit higher.” The corners of Rosemary’s mouth twitched. It was obvious she was suppressing a smile.

“I will believe a year older than me.” Rosemary shook her head, the smile slipping the tight hold she had on it. “Two? Three?”

“Higher,” she said, her amusement clear in the tone of her voice.

He stared at her in disbelief. “…it cannot be as many as four.”

A burst of laughter escaped her. “Hah! Double that and you’ll be in the right neighborhood.”

“That is not possible.”

Rosemary’s face was a picture of impish amusement. “Black don’t crack, Dr. Kelley.”

“What does that— no, never mind. I do not wish to know.” He set his hands on the edge of her desk and leaned forward, staring down at her, a disgruntled frown taking over his face.

All she did was smirk at him. “Tell you what, you ever get older than me, and I promise I will stop calling you boy,” she said, reaching out to pat one of his hands consolingly. 

"Feh. So you will stop… what is the phrase.” He looked down at his hands, trying to come up with the right words, and trying at the same time to not notice that Rosemary had left her hand on the desk, and if he just reached out… “Ah, I remember. Over your dead body, isn’t it?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Rosemary’s smirk turned into a proper smile, and she leaned back her chair, her hand slipping off the desk and out of his reach as she did. “Got it in one.”

Karl’s frown etched itself a little deeper. ”Suka,“ he said, his voice suddenly raspy and deep, not entirely certain whether he was berating her for calling him a boy or whether… No, best not to go down that path, he thought.

He looked up to find Rosemary eyeing him sternly over the top of her glasses. "Now, Doctor, you know how I feel about being called a bitch. Only do it in-”

Karl rolled his eyes and finished a sentence he’d heard her say more times than he had bothered counting over the past year. “-in languages you do not yet know the word for bitch in, yes, I remember.”

“Good boy,” she said, the amusement back in her voice.

“You call me boy, I call you suka, suka,” he shot back.

Rosemary gave him a mock-disgusted look, then turned back to her computer. “Ugh. Fine. Fair play and all that. Now scamper off to your lab, kiddo, I have work to do. And so do you.”

“Kiddo?!”

“Back to WORK, Dr. Kelley.”

Something in her voice went straight to his hindbrain, and he straightened up, startled just as much by how far he’d leaned over the desk towards her teasing as he had been by her sudden change in tone. “Yes ma'am,” he heard himself say, and turned to leave her office on automatic, moving at a pace that wasn’t quite a jog. I’m not afraid of her, he told himself. It was just necessary to follow her commands promptly if he wished to stay on her good side.

I wonder, came a thought, unbidden, what it would take to get on her very good side?

March 6th, 1990

“I think I’ve heard enough about the science side of things. You know I only understand about half of it anyway.” Mr. Carter ignored Rosemary’s skeptical look at that claim and continued. “Now tell me, how are things going on the social end for dear Karl?”

Rosemary sighed and set her sheaf of reports down on the edge of Mr. Carter’s desk. “The ostracism continues, I’m afraid.”

“Nothing too bad, I hope?”

“They other scientists are just… Russia’s made a lot of people—a lot of countries—angry. If we could get him some vocal training, maybe get rid of the accent…”

“Hm. I’ll consider it.”

Rosemary suppressed the urge to sigh again. In Carter-speak, that meant no. “Well. I’ll keep trying to fold him into the group, then. He’s just… reserved. And that makes them nervous around him. Socially, that is. They manage to work with him just fine.”

“You sound frustrated.”

“Not frustrated.” Rosemary bit her lower lip and considered. “Worried. He wants to do Decima tests with stellar radiation, and the proposal’s a solid one. But space crews… well, a certain level of, shall we say, intimacy is necessary, and I don’t think a man who about jumps out of his skin when I pat him on the hand is going to be ready for that sort of thing any time soon.”

Mr. Carter laughed at that. “Oh, Rosemary. Have you considered the fact that he might be interested?” Rosemary rolled her eyes, and Mr. Carter laughed again. “Oh, come now, I know you know how very charming you can be when you want to be, Rosemary. It’s not out of the question.”

“All three of the relationships we were able to confirm for him were with men, sir,” Rosemary said, drily. “Prostitutes aside, if he is interested in women, it hasn’t been a priority in the past, and I doubt it’s one now.”

“Ah, well, you won’t mind trying to get him past his little touching problem then, will you?”

“Sir, I really don’t like it when you ask me to do that sort of thing—”

“Yes, but your objection is always that they take it the wrong way, and if he—oh, how should I put it—plays for the other team, well, then, that makes him safe, doesn’t it.”

Rosemary swallowed, hearing the implied “roll over or else” in Mr. Carter’s tone, and dropped her gaze to the desk in front of her. “Yes, sir.”

“Good girl. We’re done here.”

“Yes, sir.”


	16. Thanksgiving 1990 and also they finally fuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smutty. Also cute.

November 22nd, 1990

The building was dark and empty, but Karl’s keycard still let him in to the lab complex. He’d been invited to the Thanksgiving celebration the other scientists in his lab put together each year, but the invitation hadn’t been offered with much enthusiasm, and the thought of spending the day around people who didn’t seem to like him very much as they chattered and ate too much did not appeal to him. Last year had been excruciatingly awkward, and a day spent in an empty lab working sounded… well. It sounded acceptable, if a bit lonely. And there was always more work to do.

He paused on the third floor landing, and frowned; light was pouring through the frosted glass window on the door between the hall and the stairs. So, the lab was not as empty as he thought it was. Well, better to let whoever it was know that they were not alone, either; he was made of stern stuff, but even he had to admit that the giant, empty lab complex was just a little bit creepy, and the last thing anyone needed was to come across another person unexpectedly.

The latch on the door opened with an unexpectedly loud click, echoing in the silence of the building, and he found himself staring down the short hall that lead to the offices belonging to support staff at a startled-looking Rosemary. The door of her office was wide open, her desk lamp and the overhead fluorescents both on, overpowering the weak sunlight coming in her office window. She was leaning against her desk, an appalling pair of bright yellow reading glasses perched on her nose, a stack of papers clutched to her chest.

She recovered her composure before he did, and set the papers down, smiling warmly at him. “Hello, Doctor Kelley.”

“Er. Hello.” Karl stepped into the hall, glancing from side to side to make sure there were no other surprises down the side hallways, and let the door to the staircase fall shut behind him. It slammed shut and he winced at the noise.

“You can take today off, you know,” Rosemary said conversationally, doing what she always did and easing a bit of the awkwardness he felt. “Even Pryce is. Well, under duress, I suppose, since it took Carter dragging her off to whatever the two of them get up to on Thanksgiving, but…” she trailed off, giving Karl a curious look. “You’ll be going to the scientists Thanksgiving, I’m sure?”

Karl tucked his arms behind his back and looked down at his feet. “Er. No, I thought I’d get another observation cycle in.”

“I see.” The tone of Rosemary’s voice made it clear that she did, in fact, see.

He looked up in time to catch a fleeting look of pity on Rosemary’s face. “You cannot take today off?”

Rosemary laughed at that. “I could, I suppose, but this is one of the few days a year I can really get the filing sorted out properly. No one interrupting me every few minutes with this problem or that, no meetings…”

“I see. I take it that is my cue to, ah, let you get on with it?”

“Mm,” she answered, along with a little nod, and he turned back to the stairs. “Doctor Kelley?”

“Hm?” He paused halfway through the door to the stairs and turned back towards her.

“Nothing much. Just wanted to let you know that if you get hungry, there’s food in the kitchenette fridge on this level.”

Karl made a face. “Not more of your tuna casserole, I hope?”

Rosemary laughed again. “Goodness, no. The cafeteria sent up a few, ah, Thanksgiving-inspired meals yesterday. Though whoever prepared them decided to get a little creative with the definition of a sandwich.”

“Oh?”

“Turkey, stuffing, gravy, and cranberry mayonnaise. On rolls.”

Karl shuddered expressively. “I think I might prefer the tuna casserole.”

“Ah, well, man cannot survive on pecan pie alone.”

“Could try,” he shot back, before letting the door slam shut behind him as he escaped onto the stairwell. Rosemary’s laughter, warm and genuinely amused, followed him up the stairs.

Rosemary sighed and stood up from her desk, stretching her arms over her head until her back popped. She’d discarded her jacket and ascot around noon, dumping both over the back of one of the guest chairs in her office before rolling up her sleeves and unbuttoning the top few buttons of her blouse. She always forgot exactly how active filing was, and opening the window only helped the sweat situation so much; Florida was a swamp, after all, and even in November it wasn’t exactly cold out. Or at least not what she’d once considered cold; most native Floridians started walking around in puffy down jackets when it got down to this temperature. The building manager, a native Floridian himself, liked to keep the lab complex at a balmy 75 degrees all year around, and for the past half an hour Rosemary had been thinking with particular envy about the individual temperature controls the labs had.

She picked up the latest stack of reports she’d been sorting; nothing classified, nothing that belonged in the Black, but there were one or two things she thought she might need to run by Mr. Carter. All she could really do today was file them, though, so she kicked her heels off next to the desk and knelt to unlock the lowest drawer of the closest filing cabinet.

Of course, the lowest drawers on each of her filing cabinets always turned into catch-alls over the course of each quarter, so this maneuver revealed a whole new set of files to pull out and take a look at and make decisions about. Most of the files would go straight back into the drawer, so she didn’t bother moving them to her desk, but started arranging them on the floor instead, looking each file over and pulling out papers that needed to be shredded, making sure nothing was misfiled.

The sound of someone clearing his throat broke her concentration, and she looked up to see Doctor Kelley staring down at her with an expression of… well, she wasn’t quite sure. He was so reserved it was hard for her to read him most of the time, and she was normally very good at reading people.

She raised an inquisitive eyebrow at him, and he raised his hands defensively. “I did knock,” he said.

“Sorry. Was there something you wanted…?”

His hands were still up in front of him, and he waved them dismissively. “No, it is nothing important. I did not mean to disturb you.” He made as if to leave her office, but paused at the corner of her desk, facing away from her, his back very straight. “I was planning to eat lunch, and was wondering…” he trailed off, glancing over his shoulder at her.

Rosemary had, in fact, eaten one of the dreadful sandwiches several hours ago, but something about the tone of his voice gave her pause. She made a show of peeking at the clock on her desk. “Goodness, is that the time? Mind if I join you?”

The corners of his mouth twitched up slightly, the closest expression to a smile he ever made. “That would be nice,” he said. He came back around the desk and offered her a hand up, judiciously averting his gaze from her chest. She quickly did the open buttons on her blouse back up, then took his hand and hauled herself back to her feet. He didn’t let go of her right away; instead he steadied her by the elbow as she nudged her heels back upright and slipped back into them.

“What a gentleman.” She beamed her highest-wattage smile up at him, just to see how he’d react, and to her surprise he actually blushed. He dropped his grip on her arm as if she’d burned him, and rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, his movements stiff and awkward.

Rosemary felt a bit guilty. She’d spent the past eight months doing exactly as Mr. Carter had requested: the other scientists in the lab still hadn’t warmed up to Doctor Kelley, so she’d been doing what she could to make sure he had some kind of friendly human contact every couple of days. And it had helped; when he’d gotten here, he would never have done something so sociable as asking someone to have lunch with him.

It was just a pity that she was the only person he seemed inclined to be sociable with.

Al watched Rosemary cross the parking lot outside of Goddard’s on-site apartment complex, waiting for her to properly pay attention to her surroundings and notice him. It took her much longer than it usually did; her face was locked in the corporate drone mask she wore so well, and it shouldn’t have been. Rosie was almost always chatty and relieved after she’d had a day alone to get her office in order, but this… this wasn’t her at all.

Then she looked up and caught sight of him, and a brilliant smile changed her face entirely. “Al! I thought you said you weren’t going to be able to make it this year.”

“I’m technically on a business trip,” he said, grinning back. “Just enough time to make a flying visit and bring you Chinese food.” He held up a paper bag. “You still like beef and broccoli, right?”

Rosie nodded and used her keycard on the front door of the apartment complex. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, her voice tight with… something. Al frowned and followed her to her apartment, down at the end of the first floor. Rosie normally kept her emotions close to her chest, so if he could hear that something was off… She unlocked her apartment door and waved him in. “Put that down in the kitchen and take your pants off.”

Al’s eyebrows flew upwards in amusement. “Well now, darlin’, if I’d known that’s all you’d want from me, I’d have eaten before you got here.”

Rosie gave him a guilty look. “Sorry. Though you did say it was a flying visit. Ten minutes enough time to feed yourself?”

“Plenty,” he said. He reached out and chucked her gently under the chin. “What’s got in to you today that’s got you all het up, Miss Rosie?”

Rosie shrugged and glanced off to the side. “Just one of those days, I suppose. Things got a bit… off track.” She followed him into the kitchen, watching as he pulled the cartons of food out of the bag and laid them out on the little round table in the center of the kitchen. Rosie handed him a fork, and he sat down, popped open a container of rice and another of sesame chicken, and started eating.

He gestured expansively at the remaining containers with his fork. “You’re not hungry?”

“I had a second lunch,” she said, gathering up her share of the Chinese food and stuffing the containers in her fridge.

“Well, now, that is unusual.”

Rosie opened her mouth, then shut it again, exhaling noisily through her nose. Al studied her face; something was definitely bothering her. After a moment she spoke. “I had company in the lab today.”

Al ran down the mental list of people who might have this effect on Rosie. “Don’t tell me Pryce was breathing down your neck all day.”

Rosie laughed at that. “No, not Pryce. Doctor Kelley.” At Al’s blank look, she added “The Russian.”

Al frowned, and stabbed another piece of sesame chicken, gesturing at Rosie with the loaded fork. “I thought you liked the Russian.”

Rosie sighed. “I pity the Russian. There’s a distinct difference.”

“Is that all?” Rosie gave him an inquisitive look, but Al deliberately took another bite of his food, chewing as slowly as possible and watching her expression turn irritated.

“I really don’t know what you mean,” she said, punctuating her words with an annoyed huff. “Eat faster.”

Al considered pushing the issue, but if Rosie didn’t want to talk about whatever was bothering her, she just wouldn’t, and no amount of pushing would get her to. “Why don’t you go get ready for me?” He asked instead. “Go and take your hair off.”

Rosie raised an eyebrow at him. “And the suit too?”

“Naw. You know how much I enjoy undressing you.”

Rosie smirked. “Fine, but I’m taking the pantyhose off. You always wind up snagging them.”

“Says the woman who keeps ripping the buttons off my shirts,” he called after her as she headed towards the bedroom. He grinned and turned back to his food, wolfing it down.

After all, he couldn’t keep Miss Rosie waiting.

Karl was in trouble.

It wasn’t the sort of trouble he was used to; there were no party thugs breathing down his neck, no superiors threatening his imminent demise if he didn’t toe the line.

No, he was in trouble because he’d walked into Rosemary’s office and found her kneeling on the floor, her prim little blouse unbuttoned enough to expose a truly vast amount of cleavage, and the first thought through his head had been “I wonder what she’d look like with her lips around my cock.”

It was just that he hadn’t expected it, that was all. It had to be a side effect of how lonely he’d been since… well, he’d say since he arrived in America, but he’d been lonely long before that. And he’d been whisked off from his lonely job in a lonely lab and dumped down here, and Rosemary…

He suspected he’d be half in love with anyone who went out of their way to be kind to him at this point. It was the lust that was really surprising.

Or maybe not so very surprising, when their apartments—and more specifically, their bedrooms—shared a wall. He knew a little too much about how Rosemary sounded in the throes of ecstasy for his own comfort, and he would be lying if he said he hadn’t ever laid in bed listening and fantasizing about taking the place of whoever was making her scream.

It had only been once.

Well, maybe twice.

Karl knew it was a hopeless infatuation. She had a partner. He’d heard the man’s voice through the wall, no words, just a deep voice, goading Rosemary on, gentling her after. Karl had never seen the man, but that didn’t change the fact of his existence.

Still… still. He could not get the image of Rosemary kneeling at his feet like that out of his head. He could not forget the way she’d smiled at him, the way she’d teased him during lunch; he had, in fact, resorted to pecan pie and nothing else, the sandwiches had just been too strange for him to do anything but pick at them, and she had laughed at him, had cajoled him into laughing with her… and for a little while he’d forgotten to be lonely.

So maybe that was why, when he finished writing up the day’s work and headed back to the apartment complex, he found himself passing the door of his own apartment and knocking on hers.

He heard an exchange of voices inside, and took a step back—he hadn’t expected Rosemary to have company—but it was too late. The door swung open. A giant of a man—who Karl recognized vaguely as Rosemary’s partner filled the doorway, if only because of his size—filled the doorway, wearing trousers and a partly unbuttoned dress shirt with… yes, that was a smear of Rosemary’s red lipstick at the collar, wasn’t it. Karl took another step back. “Ah, I did not realize Rosemary had company…”

The man’s face lit up with amusement. “Naw, I’m on my way out soon anyway. Come on in.” Without quite knowing how it had happened—he thought he’d been a respectable distance away from the apartment door—Karl found himself propelled through the doorway of Rosemary’s apartment and down the little hall into the living room. Rosemary’s apartment was an exact mirror of his, the same couch and two armchairs and side tables occupying her living room. The side tables and both armchairs were strewn with piles of paper, stapled stacks of journal articles covered in highlighter marks and scribbled notes. “Sit down, make yourself comfortable,” the man said, gesturing at the couch, before knocking on what must be the bedroom door in this apartment. “You’ve got company, Miss Rosie.”

Karl settled himself carefully on the middle of the sofa—both of the arms looked like they were in imminent peril of paper avalanches from the side tables—and heard Rosemary respond with a muffled “Is it someone I need to put my hair on for?” through the bedroom door.

The giant turned and looked Karl up and down, then responded with “He didn’t put his hair on for you, so I can’t see why you’d bother.”

There was a long moment of silence from inside the bedroom, then he heard Rosemary’s voice again. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

The giant crossed the room and perched himself on the arm of the least-perilous looking armchair. “So you’re her Doctor Kelley, then.”

Karl tried and failed to suppress a startled look. “She has, ah, spoken about me?”

The giant gave Karl another assessing look. “It’s more what she hasn’t said.”

Karl frowned, bristling a bit. “What does that mean?”

The giant laughed, nonplussed, and leaned forward conspiratorially, his voice dropping to something just above a whisper. “I think you’ll do nicely. The real question is whether you’ll catch her if I give her a shove in the right direction before I go.”

Karl stared at the giant, baffled, but before he could even figure out what question to ask in response to that cryptic statement, the door of Rosemary’s bedroom opened and she bustled out, tying the belt on an oversized bright red terrycloth robe as she came. Her face was free of makeup, and her head was covered in a thin fuzz of hair, not the unbroken dark brown he was used to seeing, but perhaps the same brown diluted with grey. “You wear a wig,” he blurted out, startled.

Fortunately, Rosemary seemed more amused than insulted at this outburst. “Yes, I do.” The giant had straightened up as Rosemary had entered the room, and she turned to him. “Flying visit over, then?”

“I’m afraid so, Rosie my darlin’,” the giant drawled. “Walk me to the door?”

Rosemary nodded and followed the giant to the door. He ducked into the kitchen along the way, coming out with a massive suit jacket slung over his shoulder, and bent down to kiss Rosemary on the cheek and say something quiet to her. Rosemary responded, and her response set off a tense, whispered conversation. Karl did his best to ignore it, and carefully extracted the top paper from one of the side tables.

Escaping was out of the question right now, so he might as well read.

Al bent down and bussed Rosemary lightly on the cheek. “I’ll be back for the Christmas party. See you then?”

“If I’ve forgiven you by then for letting a strange man into my apartment.”

Al glanced over Rosemary’s shoulder at the living room, then looked down at her, concerned. “I can kick him out before I go, if you’d like.”

Rosemary sighed. “It’s fine, Al. He’s… safe.”

“But you’re wishing he was a little bit less safe, aren’t you,” Al said blandly, studying her face with an uncomfortable intensity.

Rosemary huffed irritably. “I don’t sleep with people from my lab, Al.”

“Rosie, I’m going on another long trip next year.”

Rosemary tamped down a sudden surge of panic, keeping her face smooth and still. “How long this time?”

“Six months, at least. Maybe a year. And…” Al sighed. “I’d feel better, you know. If you had someone here. It’s been almost two years since Charlotte transferred, and you’ve been making do with my spare minutes.”

“I don’t need sex,” Rosemary protested. Al raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I don’t.”

“Maybe not, but you need someone to remind you that you’re a human being every once in a while.” Al cupped her cheek with his free hand, and she closed her eyes and leaned into it. He ran his thumb across her cheekbone, and she sighed.

“I’m going to miss you.”

“I know, Rosie.”

“You’re not going to miss me?”

“You know very well I miss you like hell. Even if you only use me for sex.”

“Especially because I only use you for sex, you mean.”

Al chuckled. “Well, there is that.” He swept Rosemary close in a one-armed hug, and she wrapped her arms around him and tucked her face against his chest. “One of these days I might not come back, Rosie. I’m not getting any younger, and the dangerous bits of what I do aren’t getting any easier.”

“I know.”

He released her, and nodded in the direction of the living room and Doctor Kelley. “So think about it.”

“Al…”

Al bent over to whisper in Rosemary’s ear. “Any man who’s willing to glare at me the way he did for the sin of existing in your apartment isn’t completely indifferent, Rosie.” Al straightened out and grinned down at her, then let himself out of her apartment, leaving her standing in the entry hall, her mouth gaping in indignation.

Karl frowned at the paper in his hand, then almost laughed. It was something to do with using modified bacteria to produce biofuels; not something Karl himself had much experience with, but Rosemary, on the other hand, had very decided opinions on the subject. He flipped to the conclusions to be sure, and almost grinned at her scrawled “But as the author is an idiot who couldn’t come up with a well-designed study to save his life, I choose to ignore these conclusions.” He turned the page over, and the back of the page, instead of being blank, was filled with an invective-laden rant summarizing all the angry notes from earlier in the paper and a proposal for a better-designed study, all in Rosemary’s round, sprawling handwriting. A very good, very detailed proposal, which continued down the back of the pages containing the notes and citations before being cut off abruptly.

Karl frowned suddenly and set the paper down on the right side of the couch, reaching across the cushion to grab the next one off the pile on the side table. He flipped through it. This one was something to do with biomechanic structures, and it exhibited the same pattern, or almost; Rosemary’s handwriting was less critical about this paper, and rather than a proposal it had a list of small changes. One particular section of the paper had been highlighted intensely in three colors and had a scrawled “Pryce?” next to it.

Another paper, this one about growing algae as a food source, Rosemary’s notes outlining the ways the experiment would need to be modified to be run in space. Another paper, and more of the same, insightful commentary mixed in with criticisms mixed in with proposed improvements.

He barely registered the front door of the apartment opening and closing, and didn’t realize he was alone in the apartment with Rosemary until she scooted herself onto the couch cushion to his left and tucked her feet up under her. He acknowledged her with a distracted nod, and she peered over at the paper in his hand, then turned and shuffled through the papers on the side table next to her, eventually unearthing a pair of turquoise reading glasses. She shoved the glasses on and turned her attention back to the paper he was holding.

“Oh, that!” She said, excited. “Doctor Park always writes such lovely papers.”

Karl turned towards her and gestured at the discarded papers on the other cushion. “How did I not know you were like this?”

Rosemary grinned. “The proposals you bring me are always rock-solid on the experimental design end, at least by the time they’re written up. We always hash them out in your weekly meetings, remember?”

Karl’s frown got a little deeper. “No one who can do this should be a lab manager.”

Rosemary’s grin faded. “Come now, Doctor Kelley. Surely you’ve been at Goddard long enough to realize that everyone here is just a little bit ahead of the curve.”

“There is ‘ahead of curve,’ yes, but this!” Karl snatched up the first paper he’d picked up and turned to her experimental design, gesturing angrily at it. “This is 'should have lab of own.’” He turned back to her, making eye contact, and tried to read her expression, but couldn’t. After a long moment, she broke away, looking down at her hands.

“Maybe somewhere else,” she said quietly, “but not at Goddard.” She turned back to him, her expression intense. “And somewhere else would care that I haven’t done original research in almost forty years, or have anything beyond a Bachelor’s degree.”

“How many languages do you speak?”

Rosemary looked startled. “Well, that came out of nowhere.”

“Answer the question.”

“Other than English? Only three fluently.” He gestured as if to say, continue, and she ticked them off on her fingers. “German, Spanish, French.”

“And if you count the ones you are less-than-fluent in?”

“I can get by in Mandarin, and you already know how bad my Russian is.”

“I imagine you could 'get by,’ as you say, in a few other languages,” he said, and she gave him a confused look. “You have a broad base.” He glared down at the paper in his hand again. “There are places where lack of degrees, lack of research history would not be so important, and yet you are here, at Goddard, filing other people’s work, when you should be doing work of your own.”

“I like my job,” Rosemary said simply. “And I’m old enough that the idea of starting over again in some other company, some other country doesn’t hold any appeal. Most lab work starts to feel like solitary confinement after a few months, anyway.” She tucked her feet the rest of the way under her body and rose up on her knees, flinging an arm across the back of the couch and leaning against his shoulder to get a better look at the paper he was holding. "Which paper set this rant off, anyway?”

Karl froze, his anger dissipating, his entire body screaming with sudden awareness of Rosemary’s proximity. Somewhere near his ear, she said something that he could not parse, because her body was pressed up against his left side, and her breasts were resting against his arm, and all he wanted to do was strip her of that ridiculous, oversized red robe she was wearing and push her down on the couch and bury himself inside of her.

“You’re not paying attention at all, are you,” she murmured directly against his ear, before sitting back against the arm of the couch. Karl snapped back to reality as she withdrew her body. He’d dropped the paper on the floor, and he bent over to pick it up with numb fingers and set it back on the couch, trying to find his train of thought.

“That man earlier,” Karl said, still dazed. “Who was he?”

“Al?” Rosemary laughed a bit. “He didn’t even bother introducing himself, did he.”

“No.”

“Well, that was Albert Bennett. He’s covert operations, you could say. Sometimes just recruiting and PR stuff, sometimes other more… unsavory things.”

“Am from Russia. Am well aware of some of the, ah, unsavory things he might be up to.”

Rosemary gave Karl an arch look over the top of her reading glasses. “Yes, with your background, you would be, wouldn’t you.”

Karl’s jaw tensed involuntarily, and he forced himself to relax. “And he is your partner?”

“No. We’re… friends, of a sort.” Rosemary held her hands up defensively at his skeptical look. “Friends with very good benefits, it’s true, but friends. Al doesn’t really do romance. Or relationships. Neither do I, for that matter. We just…” she looked off into space and gestured as if she was trying to snatch the words she was looking for out of the air. “We understand one another,” she added finally. “He knows that work is work, and play is play, and that playing doesn’t mean anything other than a bit of fun. Because that’s all I have time for.” She turned back to Karl, and they studied each other quietly for a moment.

“Do you ever, ah, 'play’ with other people?” He ventured, hesitant.

Rosemary’s expression was serious. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether that person understands that it really is just sex, and that sex has no place in the office.” She looked him up and down, considering. “I wasn’t sure… but now I am. You are interested, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question, but a flat statement of fact, and all he could do was nod in response.

Rosemary removed the reading glasses and set them aside again, examining Doctor Kelley carefully. His hands were fisted on his knees, and he was looking back at her in a sidelong, nervous fashion. Well, she was nervous too, she realized. God, how long had it been since she’d been nervous? Sex had always been straightforward, at least since…

“Al seems to think I should just fuck you, and be damned the consequences,” she said, cutting off her own train of thought. Doctor Kelley looked at her properly at that, his nonexistent eyebrows climbing his forehead. “Well. You can see how that won’t do.”

“Why will it not do?” He asked, his voice husky.

“What’s my job, Doctor Kelley?”

Doctor Kelley’s face snapped into his customary frown. “I do not understand…”

“Answer the question.”

“You… you order supplies. You keep things organized. You… I do not understand why you are asking me this question.”

“Perhaps I asked the wrong question, then. What’s the purpose of my job?” Doctor Kelley gave her a blank look, so she continued. “It’s to make the scientists I manage more effective at their jobs. It’s to make you more effective.” She studied his face, knowing he might never be this unguarded around her again and regretting it for a moment. “And if part of making sure you’re more effective is to make sure that you’re not lonely… well. That falls under my purview as well.”

She’d been right. Doctor Kelley jerked back as if she’d slapped him, and he looked away. After a long moment of silence, he breathed out, “Blyad. You really are a stone cold bitch, aren’t you.”

“I have to be.” I always have been, came the echo in her mind. “So, you see.”

“Would fucking me and damning the consequences fall under your… purview?” He sounded dangerous now, and she couldn’t blame him.

“No.” She said bluntly. “No, fucking you would have nothing at all to do with my job.” He looked back up at her, and oh god, she could read him all too easily all of a sudden, and wished she couldn’t. Well. Might as well get it all out in the open. “I’m attracted to you. That made my job easier, because it came naturally. Physically, you are…” she made a gesture that encompassed all of him. “And I’ve never quite been able to resist a pair of baby blues.” They looked darker now, and hurt, but she met his eyes anyway. “So fucking you would be… well. Sex stays separate from the job.” She raised a sardonic eyebrow at him, and the creases next to his mouth grew deeper. “I didn’t want you thinking this was a workplace romance or anything of that sort. Because it isn’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to fuck you.”

Doctor Kelley shut his eyes, and leaned forward, propping his elbows up on his knees and leaning his forehead against his hands. She watched him silently, angry suddenly, for the first time in years, at what the world had done to her, that she could so easily set aside scruples and make him believe she felt something for him other than lust, angry at what the world had done to him, that he was so in need of someone to care about him. There’s an end to that, she thought. I’ve just become another person who has hurt him.

The warmth he’d felt earlier had bled away, and all that was left was a sort of frosty anger, Karl found. Anger at himself, for believing that he might not be alone, for believing that perhaps here was someone who had chosen him. Anger at Rosemary, who made it so easy to believe. He pressed his forehead into his hands, his fingertips into his scalp, fighting the urge to turn on Rosemary and lash out.

“You want to hurt me, don’t you.” Rosemary’s voice cut through the frost of his emotions, and he felt a stab of hatred, that she could so easily cut right to the core of the issue and get it out in the open.

“Am considering it,” he ground out, the muscles in his jaw clenching involuntarily. He turned his head slightly to look at her, and her face was smooth and calm and completely unafraid of him. He’d thought that face was a mask, hiding the warm, friendly Rosemary under it, but now he didn’t know which was the true her. It made him want to scare her, to make her afraid of him, if that was what it would take to see something real.

She tilted her head, as if acknowledging this unspoken urge. “I would deserve it.”

“Blyad, suka.” He let out a long, angry puff of breath, and looked away, not able to meet her cool, direct gaze. “Do you want me to hurt you?”

“No, I want you to fuck me.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her tucking the robe more firmly around her body. She slid off the couch and stood there next to him for a moment. “I am going to bed. You can leave, or you can join me there.” He felt the light press of her hand on his shoulder and wanted to lean into it, wanted to recoil from her touch. And then she was gone, crossing the room to her bedroom door.

He caught up with her before she reached it, moving before he was even aware he’d made the decision to do so, swinging her around and backing her against the wall of the living room, pinning her there with his body, revulsion and want—no, need—warring inside him. She looked up at him, still unafraid, and he leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I think I might hate you for this more than anything, suka.” He’d been hard since Rosemary had cuddled up against him on the couch, and now he ground his cock against her stomach, enjoying the little hitch in her breath this caused. “I will not be gentle.”

“I don’t need you to be,” she whispered back, and suddenly he was flat on his back on the floor, all the breath knocked out of his body. Rosemary extracted her foot from beneath his ankle. “As you can see, I’m not without defenses.” As he stared up at her in shock, she undid the belt of the robe and let it fall to the ground, then turned and walked into her bedroom, completely naked.

Karl drew in a long, shuddering breath, and then hauled himself back to his feet and followed her.

Rosemary paused just inside the door to flip on the overhead light, and managed only a couple of steps towards the bed before Doctor Kelley caught up with her, grabbing her by the hips and and pulling her back hard against him. The hard length of his cock pressed against her lower back, all-too-evident despite the fact that he was still fully dressed. He bent his head to whisper to her again, his breath hot against her ear. “That was a nasty little trick.”

Rosemary leaned her head back against his shoulder and looked up at him. “You’ll find I’m full of nasty little tricks,” she murmured, nestling her body back against him, his cock rubbing back and forth against her as she did. His breath caught, and he seemed to catch himself too, removing his hands from her hips and pulling back from her.

She turned to look at him. He was staring at her with a pained look on his face, one she was certain had nothing to do with his arousal. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“If you want to… to fuck me, why would you… would it not have been easier to lie?”

“No. Because you would inevitably want something from me that I do not have to give.” Rosemary gestured down at her body, staring at him intently. “This? This is all I have to give. And if the only way to get you to accept that is to make sure that you hate me as much as you want me, then that’s the way it has to be.”

“Could have tried. Could have left me with the illusion that I—” he cut himself off with a grunt, looking off to one side.

“That you what? Had a friend? An ally?” Rosemary shook her head and laughed, a little sadly. “Haven’t you figured out yet that there are no real friends here? Not for you, not for me. Not for any of us. Alliances only last as long as you can get something useful out of them.”

“And what did you get out of pretending to be my friend?”

“Eight months without Mr. Carter breathing down my neck about how his new pet scientist was becoming a hermit with atrophying social skills.” Doctor Kelley was still staring at the floor off to one side of his feet, every muscle in his body tense, and Rosemary approached him cautiously. She reached up to cup his cheek and turn his face towards her, and he let her, though a muscle in his jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth at her touch. “This won’t do at all,” she said, examining his face. “You’re barely able to stand me touching you. Go home, Doctor Kelley.”

She dropped her hand and turned away, crossing the room to pull open the drawer she kept the old, broken-down bras in, the ones that made it possible for her to sleep without being smothered by her own chest. Behind her, she heard Doctor Kelley shift and take a few steps, then pause. He spoke, his Russian accent even more pronounced than usual, his voice husky. “Is solution. You do not touch me. I do all touching.”

Rosemary froze and dropped the bra back into the drawer. “Given the way you recoiled from me just a few minutes ago…”

“Ah, but you were trying to take control there, suka.”

Rosemary turned and raised a sarcastic eyebrow at him. “And if I submit to you entirely, that will solve the problem, will it?”

He looked at her with a sudden flash of heat, a look that knocked the breath out of her body as surely as his impromptu trip to the floor earlier in the evening had done to him. “Yes. Will solve.”

She almost believed him.

“Lay down on the bed,” Karl ordered. Rosemary’s eyes had gone wide and her mouth had dropped open involuntarily, and now she took a deep, shuddering breath that shook her entire body. Blyad, she was magnificent. No longer young, it was true, and gravity had had its way with her figure over the years, but that only added to her appeal. The soft, light streaks of stretch marks accentuated the curves and folds of her body, and he wanted to trace every single one with his tongue. Every movement she made as she walked over to the bed and clambered in revealed a new place he wanted to explore.

If he thought about her as just a body that was his to explore, it was easier to forget that she’d hurt him.

“Spread your legs for me, suka,” he added, once she was laying on the bed. Her breath had gone ragged and harsh, and what he could see of her face had an unfocused look about it. His clothing suddenly felt too tight, too rough against his skin, so he kicked his shoes off, pulled his shirt over his head so hastily that his glasses almost went with it, unfastened his trousers and pulled his underwear off with them. Rosemary watched him undress with a gratifying amount of need in her expression, the tip of her tongue darting out to moisten her lips and her gaze fixing on his cock when he stood up straight again. He stepped out of his trousers, and her eyes followed him hungrily as he approached the bed and sat on the edge, lifting each foot in turn to remove his socks, before wadding them up and throwing them at the pile of discarded clothing.

He settled himself on his knees between her spread thighs and leaned over her, supporting his weight on one hand as he simply looked at her. She shivered under the weight of his gaze, and he gave in to the urge to touch her. He hadn’t meant to be gentle, but he couldn’t help it, tracing one of the stretch marks down the curve of her breast, then another along her side, retreating back down her body a bit at a time. Right above her pubic hair, there was a curved scar, and he traced this too, before sliding a finger along the lips of her cunt.

“You’re wet, suka. Is this for me, or is it left over from your friend?”

Rosemary let out a little whimper as his finger found her clitoris and circled it. “Oh, don’t flatter yourself. Or him,” she said, her voice gone rough with need. “It might be left over from Al, but it’s lube.” At his questioning look she added, almost primly “I’m old, remember? Assistance is sometimes necessary.”

“I suppose that answers the question of what you were doing before I got here,” he muttered, disgruntled.

“Are you jealous?” Rosemary’s voice and expression were equally incredulous, and he distracted her from the question by flicking his finger across her clitoris. Rosemary let out a little yelp, and her hips came up off the bed.

“You are very responsive.” He circled her clitoris again, and then slid his finger along the lips of her cunt again, noticing with some satisfaction that she was already slicker than she had been a moment before. “I do not think this is lube, suka,” he said, lifting a wet finger and examining it. “Perhaps you can tell me what it is.” He lifted the finger to her lips, and she sucked it into her mouth with an eagerness bordering on the obscene, her tongue teasing his finger. He pulled his finger back out of her mouth, slowly, and she groaned.

“You’re right. That is definitely for you.”

Karl grunted in satisfaction and explored the slickness between her thighs again, then sucked his finger into his own mouth, tasting an intoxicating mixture of salt and musk and Rosemary. She watched him with dark, wide eyes, her breath coming even harder. He pulled his finger out of his mouth, slick with saliva now, and used it to circle one of her nipples. She shuddered under his touch, and let out another deep groan, followed by a whimper as he switched his finger to the other nipple and lowered his mouth to the first. She was clenching the pillow on either side of her head with white-knuckled fists, obviously resisting the urge to touch him by brute force, and the little bit of him that wasn’t focused entirely on the little noises she was making in the back of her throat as he played with her nipples appreciated the consideration.

He sat back between her thighs and looked down at her again, tracing that curved scar again, wondering… but she interrupted him with a voice tight with need. “There are condoms in the bedside table. If you’re ready to fuck me.”

“Hm. Let us see if you are ready.” Karl slid two fingers inside her and she whimpered, then let out a noise halfway between a scream and a moan as he curled his fingers upwards inside her and dragged them back out. “Ah, so that is how to make you make that noise.”

Rosemary lifted her head and looked at him across the expanse of her stomach. “I sound like a dying walrus,” she said, her voice barely audible, her breath coming hard and fast.

In response, Karl just repeated the manuver. Rosemary’s eyes rolled back in her head and her head fell limply back to the pillow as she lifted her hips against his hand, trying to keep his fingers inside her.

“If you’re going to fuck me, do it properly,” she groaned.

“And how do you like to be fucked, suka?” he growled at her, teasing her entrance with his fingers before swiping them up against her clit, eking a whispery little moan out of her.

“From behind. Like the bitch I am,” she managed to get out.

Karl laughed, a dark chuckle. “Well, then. Roll over like a good little bitch.” He clambered over her leg to get close to the bedside table, and opened it to find a ribbon of foil packets. Beside him, Rosemary had rolled over on to her hands and knees, a little bit unsteady on them.

He ripped one of the foil packets away from the strip of condoms, then tore it open with unsteady hands. He had imagined many times just how sexually responsive she must be to make the sort of sounds he’d heard her make through the thin walls that separated their apartments, but blyad, it was one thing to imagine it and another thing entirely to experience it. He tried to steady himself by remembering the things she’d said earlier in the evening, about her kindness to him being a job, but his hands still shook as he rolled the condom on and positioned himself behind her.

He circled his hips, rubbing the head of his cock against her entrance. She groaned and tried to move her hips back against his, to take him inside her, but he pressed a firm hand down on her upper back, pinning her chest to the bed and making it almost impossible for her to move under him.

“What is my name, suka?” He asked, pushing the head of his cock inside her and then withdrawing. “I want you to call me by my name.”

“Doctor Kelley…” she moaned.

He used his other hand to slap her ass, hard, and she let out a little, choked gasp. “Come now, suka, it is as if you are not even trying. What is my name?”

“Karl.” She was whimpering now. “Please fuck me, Karl.”

He pressed the head of his cock into her and withdrew again, and she moaned convulsively and tried to move against him again. “I think you can do better than that, suka.”

Her entire body stiffened as she realized what he meant. “That man is dead,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

“Then help me put him to rest.” He teased her with his cock again, this time letting it slide past her entrance to nudge against her clit.

He heard one, two, three harsh, ragged breaths from her, then… “Dmitri,” she hissed, barely audible over the hard panting of his own breath. “Yebat menya, Dmitri.”

The sound of her clumsily pronounced Russian would have taken him over the edge if he’d already been inside her. As it was, he was frantic with need as he buried his cock to the hilt in her cunt in one hard stroke. She was slick and tight around him, even through the condom, and she let out a little scream and a muffled swear word as he started fucking her hard. He moved his hand from her upper back to grip her hips instead, pulling her back hard against him with each stroke, and she moved with him, just as frantic with her own need, letting out little yelps that were almost pained each time he thrust fully inside her. He didn’t notice her working an arm under her body until he felt her fingers down near his cock, one of them working away at her clitoris, the others dragging against the underside of his cock each time he thrust into her. Rosemary screamed suddenly, her cunt convulsing around him, and he let out a little grunt as his body stiffened and his own climax left him panting and gasping against her back.

He knew he could not trust her, but blyad, how he wanted to.

Rosemary let Doctor Kelley go to the bathroom first to take care of cleaning himself up. She bustled around the bedroom while he was gone, picking his clothing up and shaking it out, folding it neatly on the end of the bed. When she heard the toilet flush and the sink start running, she grabbed her own nightwear back out of the drawer she’d left open before they’d… before Doctor Kelley had ordered her on to the bed. She’d timed it well; he opened the door to the bedroom again as she went to leave it, and she was able to duck around him with a smile and a nod.

She got to the bathroom and shut the door with a firm click, then turned and bent over to lay her forehead against the cool porcelain tiles of the bathroom countertop. What had she been thinking? Good lord. She didn’t sleep with the people she worked with directly. She’d kept to that rule for the better part of a decade. What had possessed her?

She lifted her head and stared at her reflection in the mirror, frowning. Was she really as lonely as Al seemed to think she was? Maybe she’d been lonely for so long that she didn’t recognize how it felt any more.

She wanted to cry suddenly, and instead she turned on the cold tap of the bathroom sink and splashed water over her face, pressing her fingers against the corners of her eyes and willing the tears away.

She hadn’t cried in even longer than a decade. There simply hadn’t been time for it. She wasn’t going to start now.

Rosemary dried her face off, then shoved the shower curtain aside to get her washcloth. She cleaned herself up at the sink, used the toilet, put on the broken-down bra and shorts she slept in most nights, listening all the while for the click of the front door closing again and not hearing it. Perhaps he’d left while she’d been… well, breaking down.

“There’s no time for this, Rosemary,” she said out loud, looking her reflection in the eye. “Get your act together.” Her reflection was still troubled. She turned on her smile, the high-octane one that was so effective at hiding everything behind it. And if it wavered a bit at the corners, well, it had to be nearly midnight by now. Of course she was tired.

She took a deep breath and left the bathroom, pausing at the front door to lock it, then headed back to her bedroom and came to a startled halt. A pair of chunky black glasses were sitting on her bedside table, and Doctor Kelley was curled up on the far side of the bed, dead asleep and snoring quietly. She flipped the overhead light off and waited a moment for her eyes to adjust, before padding over to the bed and staring down at him in the dim light filtering through the blinds from the parking lot lights, still not quite believing her eyes. How long had it been since she’d last slept with someone? Not sex, but shared a bed with another person. She didn’t remember.

Rosemary squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her index fingers to the inner corners of her eyes again. She would not be touched by the actions of this ridiculous man. She opened her eyes again and glared at him, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“Don’t you dare stop hating me, Dmitri Vologin,” she whispered, reaching across the bed and letting her hand hover briefly over his cheek. “Don’t you dare.”

Because I don’t think I could resist you if you do, came the thought that she didn’t dare say out loud.

Dmitri woke in the early hours of the morning. No, Karl, he was Karl Kelley now, Dmitri Vologin had been dead for nearly two years. But then he rolled onto his side and was faced with the sleeping form of Rosemary, and he wanted to be Dmitri Vologin again, to be a man who had not yet been hurt by this strange, prickly, magnificent woman. Her back was to him, and a few gray hairs caught the dim light from the parking lot outside, and blyad, he wanted to touch her again.

So he did, curling in close behind her, wrapping an arm around her body. She’d put on some sort of top, a thin bra that held her breasts in place but did nothing to prevent him from finding one of her nipples and brushing his fingers over it slowly, reverently. She murmured something in her sleep, and turned towards him, stretching as she slowly came to.

He found her other nipple and circled it gently, feeling it harden under his fingers, and although her eyes snapped open after a moment, she did not pull away or protest. Still… “Is this all right?” He froze, his hand cupping the curve of her breast, until she nodded, a slight movement barely visible in the dark of the room, and put up her hand to nudge his fingers back to her nipple. He let out the breath he’d been holding in a relieved sigh and continued his cautious exploration. He hadn’t taken the time to simply be with her last night, he’d been too angry, wanted too much to take her control from her, and now he found that he craved it.

Rosemary made a little noise in the back of her throat that nearly undid him. Hell, he could not imagine hating a woman who was soft and warm and close and made a noise like that when he touched her. But he did, with an intensity that surprised him, and he froze again, then pulled his hand away, a sudden surge of anger warring with the warmth.

Rosemary reached over and cupped his face, almost tenderly. “I was wondering if you’d forgotten to hate me,” she said in a voice made raspy by sleep. “Remember to hate me, Doctor Kelley.”

He sighed unhappily. “And what about Dmitri Vologin? Should he hate you too?”

There was a tiny hitch in Rosemary’s breath, and this time she pulled away from him, rolling onto her back and staring at the ceiling. She didn’t answer, so he reached out to touch her cheek carefully, and found it wet. He lifted himself up on an elbow and leaned in close, only to find tears pouring down her cheeks.

He gave a cluck of concern and reached over her to grab a tissue from the box on her bedside table, dabbing carefully at her face. She snatched the tissue out of his hand after the second dab and swiped angrily at her cheeks. “Even if Dmitri Vologin were still alive,” she said forcefully, “I would have nothing left to give him.”

He frowned. “And what do you have for Karl Kelley?”

“He’s already had all I have to give. Betrayal, hatred, and sex.”

“And warmth, and laughter, and friendship.”

“None of that was real.”

“I do not believe you.”

“I will keep telling you until you do.” 

Karl found himself wishing there were enough light in the room to make out the expression on her face. He considered grabbing his glasses, turning the bedside lamp on, forcing a confrontation, but then he couldn’t imagine how it would end. What was he expecting, that he would get a tearful apology from her for hurting him? That she would confess that she, what, really did like him? That she loved—no, definitely not that. What little he’d seen of this Rosemary behind the mask made her out to be a proud woman, and he could not imagine her going back on what she’d already said, even if it wasn’t true.

“Fine,” he said quietly. “If sex is one of the only things you have to give to me, then I will continue to take it.”

He turned his attention back to her body, stroking and touching, undressing her, working her to a fever pitch that had her biting down on her hand to stifle the noises she was making. When she was ready for him again—a process that, to his shame and an amused “Menopause is a bitch,” from Rosemary, required the assistance of lube this time—he rolled on another condom and pulled her over him and helped her ride them both to completion.

Afterwards, it was Rosemary’s turn to collapse against him, insensible, her lips pressing against his collarbone, the closest thing to a kiss that he’d gotten from her. He took advantage of it, wrapping one arm around her back and placing the other hand at the nape of her neck, stroking gently. She came back to herself after a moment, shoved his arms away impatiently and slid off his body, then off the bed, presumably making for the bathroom. Karl sighed and stared at the ceiling for a moment, then stood and cleaned himself up as well as possible with the tissues from the bedside table, discarding them and the condom in the small trash can that was next to the table. He retrieved his clothing from where he’d stashed it on top of Rosemary’s dresser and dressed quickly, noting the time on Rosemary’s alarm clock with a frown. He’d have time for a shower and breakfast before he was due in the lab, if he was quick.

He paused at the door to the bathroom and considered knocking, but the sound of the shower turning on made it clear that Rosemary had come to the same conclusion he had, so instead he unlocked the door and left her apartment.

If his own apartment seemed even more bare and empty and sterile than usual when he unlocked the door and let himself in, well. There was nothing he could do about that.


	17. 25 Nights, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smutty. Breaking 25 Nights up into chunks of about 10k each, because it’s a lot.

November 23rd, 1990

Karl had hoped that one encounter with Rosemary would get her out of his system, especially after the nasty revelation she’d forced on him about the true nature of her interactions with him. But then he’d fallen asleep in her bed and woken to her soft and warm beside him, and he’d given himself permission for a second time. After all, he hadn’t left her apartment. Clearly it still counted as the first time.

But today… Oh, blyad. He’d been avoiding her, but on his way back from lunch he’d heard her voice down a side corridor and had gone half-hard instantly. He’d ignored it, of course, though the urge to lecture his cock about inappropriate people to continue lusting after was strong.

But that was why he found himself outside of Rosemary’s door again at eight that night, hating himself for it and twisted up in anticipation all at the same time. He knocked, and the door opened instantly. Had she been waiting for him? He thought that perhaps she’d just returned to the apartments a short while ago herself; she’d kicked off her shoes, but was otherwise the same well-groomed corporate Rosemary he normally saw in the office.

She looked at him for a long moment with an expression he couldn’t read, and then silently opened the door further and stepped back to let him slip past her into the apartment. They stood in the entryway, awkwardness thick enough in the air to cut with a knife.

“Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Tea?” Rosemary offered up, gesturing at the kitchen door.

“Decaf?”

“That could be arranged.”

He followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table while she swapped out the filter on her coffee machine, measured out grounds, started it up. He cleared his throat, but couldn’t think of anything to say, and Rosemary shot him another indecipherable look.

She leaned on the back of the chair across from him, as far away as she could get while still seeming to join him at the table. “Have you eaten? I still have the Chinese food Al brought last night.”

“I could eat. If you do not mind sharing.” He said cautiously. She shook her head and went to the fridge, and after a few moments the hum of the microwave joined the dripping of the percolator, the smell of the reheating food mixing with the coffee and making everything feel strangely domestic.

He liked it, and that scared him. She has been faking every emotion you thought she felt for you, he reminded himself.

But blyad, it was so easy to forget that, sitting there in her kitchen, watching her bustle around as she pulled out silverware, retrieved mugs from the lowest shelves of her cabinets—everything above the first shelf of the cabinets over her sink was completely bare, obviously a concession to her height, but she didn’t seem to have much to put in the cabinets anyway. Well, neither did he in his apartment. They’d provided him with plates, bowls, cups, mugs, silverware, four of everything, apparently new but lacking in character, almost identical in every way to the pieces Rosemary had pulled out of her own cabinet. Was every apartment in this complex like that? The same couch and two armchairs in the living room, the same four place settings worth of dishes, the same little round kitchen table with two tall chairs? It felt like he was observing the entire thing from the outside all of a sudden, and realizing what solitary, focused lives they all must live. He ate most of his meals in the cafeteria; the food was good, for the most part, but it was still prepared in bulk. There was nothing personal about anything of it.

It was not so different from how he’d been living his life in Russia, he reflected, but this place… Party politics had not prepared him for Goddard, for Carter. He was not given to strong feelings, but even compared to him, Rosemary had to be as cold as ice under all her manufactured cheer. Was that what would happen to him as well, after fifteen years in this place?

But perhaps… Perhaps this place was not what had made her what she was.

The microwave beeped, and Rosemary came towards the table with a pair of bowls heaped with steaming piles of beef and broccoli. “Hope you don’t mind eating out of a bowl, the plates are all in the sink. Nice stuff, huh? Microwaves like a dream, but doesn’t heat up hardly at all. A miracle of Goddard Futuristics ceramics engineering.”

“Hm. What happened to your child?”

Rosemary didn’t quite drop the bowls, but both of them hit the surface of the table rather hard indeed, and Karl’s wobbled back and forth a bit. He reached out to steady it. She stared down at the table for a long moment, then gave him a sharp look. “That’s a hell of a non sequitur, coming from a man who I’m pretty sure I’ve told multiple times that my personal business is none of his.”

Karl picked up a fork and scooped up some of the beef and broccoli. Before transferring it to his mouth, he tapped his lower abdomen with his other hand and said “You have scar. Right here. Typical of c-section.” He thought about adding more, but filled his mouth with the cheap Chinese food instead, carefully not looking directly at Rosemary as he chewed. He wanted to know, but if he showed too much interest, she’d probably kick him out of her apartment without the rest of his dinner.

Rosemary scooted her bowl over to the other side of the table and hopped up on the chair. He examined her carefully as she dug in to her own food. She seemed calm, but something around her eyes was surprisingly… 

Bleak is the operative word, he thought. She thinks I’ve noticed something I shouldn’t have.

“I forgot,” she said, in between contemplative bites of beef and broccoli, “that your medical degree is actually worth something.”

“Oh, thank you very much,” he scoffed, stabbing a broccoli stalk with his fork. “Discount the one degree that actually makes me a doctor.”

“How many Ph.D.s do you have again?”

He huffed irritably and turned back to his food. Without looking up, he said “So you were a mother.”

“Oh, no. Never that.”

“Your child died?”

“No, as far as I’m aware, he’s still alive and kicking.” Rosemary immediately looked appalled. “Why the hell did I just tell you that?”

“Am very good listener.”

“No you’re not.”

“Have the face for it.”

“No you don’t. You look like a Bond villain, for crying out loud.”

“Ah, I am villain? Excellent. Villains get to use the exciting forms of interrogation, do they not?”

Rosemary let out an undignified snort of laughter and his heart felt like it had stopped in his chest. She shot him an arch look. “And what exciting forms of interrogation did you have in mind for this evening, Doctor?”

Karl took an unsteady breath, and looked Rosemary up and down, his eyes lingering on the buttons of her blouse. “I can think of a thing or two,” he murmured.

Rosemary rapped him on the knuckles with the handle of her fork. “Dinner first.”

Karl gave her a mock salute with his own fork and dug in to what remained of his dinner. Rosemary was still contemplative, staring down at her food, pulling the broccoli to pieces and stabbing individual florets with her fork. He finished well before she was done, so he stood and rinsed his bowl, then added it to the pile of plates in the sink.

He briefly considered washing the dishes—no, Rosemary was still eating. If he was going to be absurdly domestic, he might as well wait until all the dirty dishes were there. Not that being absurdly domestic was his style, but it was tempting, if only to see the look on Rosemary’s face. He leaned back against the counter and watched her pick at her food. Perhaps he should simply go to the living room and dig in to the morass of paper there, find something interesting to read until she was ready to join him. But he found himself strangely reluctant to leave her presence.

Rosemary rubbed her free hand across the back of her neck, running one finger under her ascot, and Karl felt his lips twitch into an involuntary smile. He knew what to do.

Rosemary hadn’t been paying attention to where Doctor Kelley was in the kitchen, so she didn’t even register the sudden warmth of his presence behind her back at first. Then she felt the press of his forearms down onto her shoulders, and his chest against the upper part of her back as he peered over her shoulder.

“What are you doing?” she asked, as his fingers fumbled with the knot of her ascot.

“Simply trying to make you more comfortable,” he said, working the ascot free. It disappeared from her peripheral vision, and she turned her head to find that he’d draped it around his own neck.

“Are you?” she asked, bemused. “Why?”

He moved to her right side and reached for the buttons at the front of her jacket, undoing them with agonizing slowness. “When was the last time someone else did something for your comfort, suka?”

She looked away from him and stared blankly at her dinner. Oh, lord, this man was making her want to cry again. Her suits were well-tailored, and she loved the ascots, but by the end of the day… yes, she was uncomfortable. And not even Al had noticed that.

Doctor Kelley… no, Karl. She could call him Karl. Karl finished with the last button, and took the fork from her limp fingers, setting it across the bowl. He helped her slide her arms out of the jacket, and she leaned forwards mechanically so that he could hang it from the back of her chair. He picked up the fork again and put it back in her left hand, and offered up something that was almost a smile. “Eat.”

She scooped up a bit of sauce-covered rice, only to drop it back into the bowl as he started in on the tiny, close-spaced buttons of her blouse. “Karl…” she protested.

“Simply the first few,” he said, but the first two buttons were undone and he was showing no signs of stopping. She let out the breath she’d been holding when he fingered the sixth button, then came to a halt, folding back the unbuttoned sections of her blouse back and exposing her cleavage. “Keep eating, suka,” came his voice against her ear as a finger traced the curve of her breast. “Must finish dinner first.”

An anxious, keening noise forced its way out of her throat, and he chuckled, the sound making her entire body go weak with want. His hands went to her right sleeve, undoing the buttons at her wrist and rolling it up to her elbow, then he leaned across her to do the same to her left. She placed her right hand on his hip, steadying him, and somehow resisted the urge to bury her face against his neck.

When he was finished with the sleeve, he placed the fork back into her hand, yet again. “Eat, Rosemary,” he said in a voice that was suddenly rough with something that might have been desire, and Rosemary was glad for this sign that she was somehow affecting him as much as he was affecting her.

He pulled back from her and went to sit in the chair across the table again, his movements jerky, his eyes devouring her. Yes, definitely affected, she decided.

She swallowed dryly, her eyes darting around the kitchen as she tried to think of something to say. The room was oddly silent all of a sudden, and suddenly she remembered, and rose half up out of her chair, balancing between the table and the lower bar of chair that she always used as a footrest. “The coffee.”

Karl made a “stay seated” gesture with his hands and got up himself. “I will take care of it.” He made his way over to the percolator, pouring the coffee into the mugs she’d pulled out of the cabinet earlier, and brought them over to the table. “Do you take cream? Sugar?” His voice was solicitous, and he was obviously making an effort to not look at her chest, though his eyes darted back to her exposed cleavage every so often.

“Black,” she said, and he hmmed in approval, setting one of the mugs in front of her. She hadn’t thought to program the machine to turn on the warming plate once it was done brewing, but thankfully the coffee was still warm, and she took an oversized gulp of it before turning back to her food. She ate quickly now, alternating bites of beef and broccoli with swigs of coffee, ignoring the rather peculiar taste combination this made for. Across the table, Karl was sipping his own coffee, watching her with what appeared to be a combination of amusement and barely disguised lust.

You need to remind him to hate you, came the little voice in her head, but she shoved it aside.

I am going to regret this, she told the voice. But first I’m going to make sure I have nothing left to regret at all.

Rosemary finished her dinner and coffee perhaps a little too quickly in her eagerness to find out what Karl had planned for the evening. But immediately after she set her fork down in her empty bowl and tried to stand to go put it in the sink, Karl was at her side, pushing her gently back into her chair before gathering her bowl and mug up along with his own mug and heading towards the sink. He pushed his sleeves up to his elbows, then rooted around in the cabinet under the sink for a moment, pulling out the dish soap. And then… yes, yes he was washing her dishes, wasn’t he.

Rosemary watched him, bemused. More than once, she’d come in to his lab to find him cleaning absentmindedly, sterilizing glassware or scrubbing down a table with bleach. When she’d suggested on those occasions that he could leave cleaning his lab to a lab tech, or better yet, a janitor, he’d admitted that cleaning helped him think his way through whatever problem he was currently having with his research.

She wondered what he was trying to think his way through now.

Karl made short, silent work of her dirty dishes, putting them in the rack by the sink to dry before turning back towards her and leaning against the counter behind him. Rosemary found she was staring at his forearms; there was something about a man’s forearms, this man’s forearms, especially when he’d rolled up his sleeves. Something to do with tendons and muscles and oh, oh, she could not think straight around this man. Not like this, not here in her kitchen, not after he’d so deliberately started undressing her earlier, stripping her of her corporate armor.

Not after she’d eaten a meal with him, not after he’d decided to do her goddamn dishes in the most splendid display of domesticity she’d seen from a man in years.

And especially not when he was staring at her from across the room like he wanted to leap on her and devour her.

Rosemary swallowed nervously, and went for levity to break the tension in the air. “So. What foul methods were you planning to use to interrogate me this evening, Herr Doktor?”

Karl rolled his eyes and scoffed. “At least your German pronunciation is better than your Russian is.”

“Miles better. But you didn’t seem to mind my Russian last night.” Karl’s expression went dark and seductive at that reminder, and Rosemary’s breath caught in her throat.

“No, I suppose I did not,” he responded, his voice dropping to a growl. He looked her up and down slowly, his gaze caressing her from wig to pantyhose-clad feet, lingering in places, on her lips, on the curves of her breasts where they were exposed by her partially unbuttoned shirt, at the swell of her hips, the slope of her thighs. She felt it almost as intensely as a real caress, and her ability to breathe properly showed no signs of returning to her.

Finally, he spoke again, his voice still a growl. “I spent half of yesterday imagining you dressed just like that, down on your knees, my cock in your mouth,” he said, meeting her eye for a moment before his gaze was drawn irresistibly to her lips again. “Imagining your plump little hands on my thighs, imagining that red lipstick of yours all the way around me.”

Rosemary was pretty sure she was panting by now, but she couldn’t quite read her own body any more through the white-hot surge of lust that had suddenly filled her. She looked across the room at him with heavy-lidded eyes, examining him from head to toe in much the same way he’d examined her. “Was that what that look was about,” she murmured, eyes caught by the very obvious erection Karl was suddenly sporting, clearly visible even through his trousers. She flicked her eyes up purposefully to meet his own direct gaze and added “I did wonder.”

Her voice came out as a caressing purr, and Karl jerked a bit in reaction, then wrapped his hands deliberately around the edge of the counter behind him, though Rosemary couldn’t tell if he meant it as a support or as a means of holding himself back.

“Well, suka?” he rasped.

Rosemary tilted her head to one side as if considering and continued in the same caressing tone, enjoying the effect it had on Karl. “It depends. Do you intend to return the favor?”

Karl made a strangled noise and let go of the counter, launching himself across the room in her direction. She wasn’t quite sure how he found the strength for it—she was a heavy woman and he was not a large man—but he somehow managed to turn her chair away from the table in his direction with her still in it. He dropped to his knees in front of her, hands clenched on her hips, staring up at her intently.

“Of course I do, suka. I have tasted you once. I will not say no to more.”

Rosemary bit her lower lip hard, trying to regain some semblance of control over herself, but he was already working his hands up under her skirt. At his prompting tug, she found herself half-standing on the lower rung of the chair, one hand on the table and the other on his shoulder to balance herself as he rucked her tight skirt up around her waist. He reached up under the folds of it and found the waistbands of her pantyhose and underwear, and pulled both down her legs in one smooth move, waiting for her to lift a foot at a time so he could remove them and then discarding them to one side before sitting back on his haunches to admire what he’d just achieved.

Rosemary sat back down hard, her legs spreading a bit without the skirt to hold them in place, and oh, god, the look on his face when she tilted her hips forward towards the edge of the chair and let her legs dangle to either side, leaving her open and exposed to his gaze… Well. She suspected that look would keep her company for many a long and lonely night.

He rose back up to his knees, deliberately placing his hands on her thighs and rubbing his thumbs along their sensitive inner curves, slowly working his way up until his thumbs brushed her pubic hair with each sweeping caress.

Rosemary thought that if he didn’t put his mouth on her immediately she might start begging, but then one of his thumbs found its way to her clitoris as two of the fingers of his other hand slipped between the lips of her cunt and inside her in one smooth move, and her mind blanked out again in white-hot lust.

“You are soaking wet, suka,” he murmured, pulling his fingers out of her and sucking them clean. “Soaking wet and delicious.”

All Rosemary could do was let out a strangled moan. He chuckled and patted her leg with the hand that wasn’t currently teasing her clit. “Come now. You cannot be comfortable like that. I want your legs up around my shoulders.”

Somehow Rosemary found the strength to comply, though whatever it was his other hand was doing between her legs left her feeling limp and boneless. The instant her thighs were resting on his shoulders, he abandoned what he’d been doing with his fingers and leaned forward, replacing them with his lips and tongue, and Rosemary relaxed back in her chair, letting the sensations caused by the little flicks and twirls of his tongue carry her off into a pleasurable haze.

She wondered briefly through the haze what it would be like to kiss a man who was good with his tongue like that. She wondered if she could bring herself to kiss again, after all these years.

Rosemary let out a startled yelp as the brief nip of teeth joined his tongue in torturing her clit, the sharp sensation returning her mind to her body, to the orgasm this encounter was no doubt leading to. She was close. Very close.

“Do that thing you did with your fingers last night,” she begged, staring down at him and meeting his eyes as he looked up at her from between her thighs. She stroked the curve of his ear gently, and even that small pleasurable sensation made him shudder and shut his eyes and, from the feel of things, briefly lose track of what he’d been doing between her thighs. “You know the one,” Rosemary continued, her voice low and raspy as she stroked his other ear, ran light fingers over his bare scalp.

She felt his lips twitch into a smile where they were pressed against her, then he worked a hand up between them and complied.

Rosemary shuddered and twitched, then fell back limply in the chair, her orgasm hitting her with the force of a freight train.

Karl was, for once, grateful that it was his apartment right next door to Rosemary’s, and that she was at the end of the hall, with no other next-door neighbors. Though given the volume of the noises Rosemary was making, he sincerely hoped that both her neighbor across the hall and the one directly above her were out; he didn’t want to share her moans with anyone, and the thought that someone might be listening in the way he once had through his bedroom wall… well the thought was not to be countenanced, that was all. Perhaps it was hypocritical of him. It was certainly far too optimistic; so far, Rosemary seemed to mostly want him around for, well, what they were doing right now.

And what he had just done with his fingers had made her eyes roll back in her head and her entire body twitch convulsively as she screamed out her climax. He clung to her hips as her thighs squeezed hard on either side of his face and then relaxed, almost falling off his shoulders, and he used his tongue to gentle her through her orgasm until she whimpered and whispered a hoarse “Too much,” down at him.

He extracted his shoulders from beneath her thighs, standing and leaning close over her, wanting desperately to kiss her. She shuddered and wrapped her legs around his hips almost instinctively, crossing her ankles behind his back and pulling his hips close against her own. He ground against her just as instinctively, aware of the mess this would make on the front of his trousers and not caring at all in the face of a pleased whimper from Rosemary. But when he leaned down to kiss her she turned her head away, so he pressed a string of hot, needy kisses to her throat and the exposed portion of her cleavage instead, wondering briefly why she’d avoided letting him kiss her mouth. His own mouth was still wet with her, but given how eagerly she’d sucked the taste of herself off his finger when he had offered her the chance the other night…

Rosemary’s teeth nipped at his earlobe, derailing his train of thought entirely. She sucked his earlobe briefly into her mouth for a moment, then released it to press a hot kiss, accompanied by a little flick of her tongue, to the pulse point right below his ear. He moved against her, grabbing her hips to keep her close, grinding his clothing-covered erection against her cunt as he buried his face against her shoulder, breathing the scent of her in.

He was tempted, more than tempted, to throw his plan for the evening to the wind and just pull his trousers and boxers down around his knees and plunge into her right there at her kitchen table. But no, he reminded himself, she would want a condom, and he suspected that the moment would be lost in the time it took to go to the bedroom and get one out of her bedside table. He was worried if he left her, the warm glow of the domesticity they had shared earlier in the evening would evaporate and he would be reminded that she felt only lust for him, that she would pull away to the cool distance she hid so well in.

Still. Perhaps… He thrust his hips against her again, and she groaned, and he turned his head slightly to whisper against her ear. “Should we…?”

Rosemary murmured back, her lips still pressed to his neck. “We should go to the bedroom. It’s time for me to return the favor, I think. And I’ll want a condom for that.”

Karl pulled back and looked down at her, a little concerned. “I didn’t think to ask… is there…?”

Rosemary understood what he was getting at. “I’m clean,” she said, meeting his eye. “And I’ve seen your medical records, so I know you are. I just prefer to… I like being protected. I should have gotten you a dental dam.”

Karl chuckled. “Ah, but then I would not have been able to taste you, suka. And I did so enjoy that.”

Rosemary’s breath seemed to catch in her throat, and she stared up at him, her eyes wide. After a moment, she looked to one side with muttered and emphatic “God,” and he suspected that if her skin were a little paler he would be able to see her blushing.

He pulled back a little further from her and lifted his hands to her shoulders, then ran them down her arms to gather up her hands in his own. “Come, then. To the bedroom.”

Rosemary slid off the chair and landed on what seemed to be rather unsteady legs, taking a stumbling step forward. Karl caught her up in his arms and pressed a kiss to her forehead, and Rosemary stood there in his arms for a moment, nuzzling his chest. She lifted her head a bit, and kissed his neck. “I can stand on my own now, I think. You go sit on the bed. I’ve got something to, ah…” She pressed a second kiss to his neck. “Something to take care of first.” She pulled back, lifted a hand to grip his chin and make sure he was looking her in the eye. “Don’t touch anything. I want to do it myself.”

Karl suddenly felt none-too-steady on his own legs. “Yes, ma’am,” he breathed out, releasing his hold on her body and stepping back from her. She smirked up at him, and slipped around him, heading across the entrance hall to the bathroom, and he went to her bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. He glanced around the room, his mind blank except for the anticipation of whatever it was Rosemary had planned, then frowned, distracted. His glasses were smudged, and he removed them and started cleaning them on the edge of his shirt.

Rosemary entered the room, and laughed a little at the sight of him. “Fastidious man,” she said, her tone almost affectionate. He put his glasses back on and found that she had pulled her skirt back down and… oh, blyad, she had applied a fresh coat of that red lipstick of hers.

She crossed over to the bedside table and pulled a condom out of the drawer, then came over and knelt at his feet, setting the condom on the bed at his side. He stared down at her, at her cleavage, at the hint of a bra peeking through her unbuttoned shirt, at her heavy-lidded eyes and red lips, and his breath stopped in his chest.

Rosemary noticed, and chuckled, warm and low and utterly tempting, sliding her hands up his calves, gripping his knees and spreading his legs apart so she could nestle closer between them. And then her hands smoothed over the front placket of his trousers, tracing the shape of his erect cock beneath them and he thought he might never breathe properly again.

He had taken the time to explore her the night before, but of course she had touched him, not in this way. He had not wanted her to.

He wanted her to now.

She untucked his shirt and ran her hands up his chest, and he lifted his arms and bent over to let her pull it off over his head. She tossed the shirt off to one side and ran her hands down his back, pulling him close, finding one of his nipples with her mouth and tongue and oh, blyad, it almost took his mind off the fact that she was unbuttoning his trousers, unzipping, caressing his cock through one layer less. Rosemary’s mouth moved to his other nipple and he groaned, leaning forward over her, resting his forearms against her shoulders. Rosemary pulled back from his chest, and whispered against his ear. “Stand up a bit, doctor. Let’s get your pants down around your ankles.”

He let out a soft little huff of laughter, and leaned forward more, letting her pull his trousers and boxers down, and as promised she left them there, around his ankles. He looked down at her, but she had turned her focus entirely to his cock, gripping it firmly and rubbing her hand down the entire length. A drop of precum oozed out, and Rosemary leaned forward and swiped her tongue across it, making a small satisfied noise in her throat as she did.

Karl definitely would never breathe properly again. “What about protection, suka?” he managed to ask in a strained, husky voice.

Rosemary looked up at him and smiled, a warm, seductive smile that wrapped around him and took hold some place he suspected was very near his heart. “You got the chance to taste me,” she responded, her voice just as husky. “I couldn’t pass up the chance to see what you tasted like.” She lowered her head to his lap again and he felt her suck the head of his cock into her mouth, tongue flicking against the sensitive underside, and he moaned and leaned back on his hands, staring languidly down at her as she slowly took him in her mouth. After an all-too-brief exploration, she released his cock from her mouth and sighed, then reached for the condom and opened it, rolling it slowly down his length. Then her lips were on his cock again and her hands were on his thighs, her fingers gently exploring the crease between thigh and hip.

It didn’t take her long to start up a steady rhythm, her head bobbing up and down on his cock, the steady compression of lips and tongue that he could feel even through the latex of the condom making his eyes roll back in his head, making his hips thrust up against her involuntarily. One of her hands wrapped around the base of his cock, moving as her mouth did, and the other slid around his body, stroking down his spine until a finger found the sensitive place near the base of it, right where his lower back melded into his buttocks.

The small circles she made there left him cursing under his breath, squeezing his eyes shut and thrusting harder up against her mouth. She made another satisfied noise deep in her throat, the vibration adding to his pleasure, and he cursed again, louder, and sat up, pressing his hands against her shoulders to force her mouth off his cock.

“Something wrong?” Rosemary asked, looking up at him with concern.

“No, I just…” Karl let out a huff of breath, and stared down at her, unable to explain what was going through his mind.

Her presence got him hot and bothered much faster than he was used to, at his age, but he was still old enough that it took time to recover between sessions, and he did not know how long she would continue to allow this.

Just once, just once before this entire thing ended, because he knew it would end, it had to end, she was too prickly and difficult to accept anything else, so just once he wanted something simple. He wanted to lay her on the bed and get between her thighs and to take her face-to-face, not staring at her back, not watching her from below as she rode him. He wanted to look her in the eye as he entered her, as he filled her.

He wanted, and oh how strange and delicate a feeling that was.

Rosemary stared up at Karl in confusion. He’d been enjoying the blowjob, she was sure, even if having a condom in the way made it less pleasurable for both of them. But now he was staring down at her, a strange, equally confused look on his face.

He licked his lips, almost nervously, and her eyes were drawn to them, wondering if he still tasted like her, wondering if she could bring herself to press her own lips to his and find out.

She didn’t know why she wanted to kiss this man. She’d been with plenty of men and women and even a few people of more nebulous gender since she’d last kissed someone, and had never once been tempted, had never once been able to think about the act without feeling a sudden surge of revulsion, but suddenly, with him…

“Stand up,” he said, quietly, insistently, and helped her to her feet. When she was standing in front of him, he pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her waist and finding the hook and zipper on her skirt, loosening it and letting it drop to her feet. His cheek rested against her chest, but he didn’t make a move to bury his face in her cleavage, as some past lovers had done. He simply rested his head there gently, and she almost missed its presence when he pulled back and started working on the remaining buttons of her blouse.

Rosemary helped him remove her blouse when he’d finished with the buttons, still staring down at him in confusion. He was being so very gentle with her, so tender, and she wanted to embrace it, wanted to fight against it and work him back into the sort of unforgiving passion he’d been in the night before, when he’d taken her so hard and fast from behind.

I ought to hurt him, she told herself. I ought to remind him that I am not safe to touch like this, that I am Goddard’s creature alone, and anyone else who tries to gentle me gets savaged instead.

But he was looking at her reverently, tracing the fine lines of stretch marks across her cleavage, smoothing his hands down her sides, around her body. He undid the clasp of her bra, helped her out of that, and the fact that her breasts sagged immediately under the influence of gravity did not seem to stop him from continuing his worshipful exploration. And oh, oh, his mouth was on one of her nipples, and she sagged towards him, her hands on his shoulders to support herself, his going to her hips, holding her steady as he did things to her nipple that made her whimper and then cry out. And then he switched to the other one, and still, still, he was so slow and sweet and reverent, even as she grew more restless, more feverish with desire.

He lifted his head from her chest, and smiled up at her, a fierce, predatory smile that put the lie to the gentleness he’d been showing her. “Tell me, suka, if I laid you down on the bed and fucked you, would you be ready for me?”

Rosemary’s breath left her in a rush. “Perhaps you should check,” she managed to get out, her voice soft and breathy.

“Let us lay you down first,” he responded, and she let him guide her, let him pull her onto the bed, parted her thighs for him as he first explored her with his fingers and then pressed his hips against her own, holding himself over her and looking down at her with the same fierce, predatory smile on his face. 

She’d still been slick and ready under his fingers, and was grateful for it, grateful that her body was cooperating, grateful that they wouldn’t have to break this moment to go hunting for lube, grateful that he was already wearing a condom. She bent her knees, pressing them flat against the bed, rubbing up against him, feeling the length of him nudge against her entrance, then rush up into her as she pressed her hips up against his.

His predatory smile left him as she took him inside her, turning to one of wonder, his eyes on her face, watching her closely as he started to move in her. She moved with him, desperate, straining, but even in this it seemed he wanted to be slow, gentle, tender, and it was so strange, so unexpected.

Rosemary wondered, suddenly, if this was still just sex for him.

He looked down at her, that same strange expression of wonder on his face, and leaned in to rest his forehead against her own. His eyes squeezed shut as he grunted and his hips moved against her one, two, three more times, then his entire body shuddered and he collapsed against her, burying his face against her neck.

Rosemary waited for him to come to, to recover and withdraw from her quickly as he had the night before when he’d taken her from behind, but he seemed barely conscious, nuzzling absentmindedly against her neck.

“The condom,” she said finally, lifting a hand to his shoulder to nudge him gently.

He grunted again, and lifted his weight off of her, his hand moving between them to take hold of the condom before he withdrew from her. He looked down at her again after he did, leaning to rest his forehead against her own for a moment, then pulling away and heading towards the door to the bedroom, and a few moments later she heard the bathroom door close behind him.

Rosemary lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, unsure if it had still been just sex for her either.

This time, she wasn’t surprised to find him in her bed when she’d finished with her own business in the bathroom. Instead, she simply turned the overhead light off and climbed in next to him, keeping carefully to her side of the bed, strangely comforted by the sound of him snoring next to her.

November 24th, 1990

Karl hadn’t meant to fall asleep in Rosemary’s bed the night before, or at least not at first. But when he’d returned to her bedroom in search of his clothing after cleaning himself up in the bathroom, he’d been surprised to find that she’d folded it and set it on the top of her dresser instead of at the end of her bed, as she had after that first time they’d had sex.

And that bed had looked so very inviting, after what had been a long and somewhat fraught day, full of internal debates about what to do about Rosemary, finally ending in… whatever it was last night had been. Karl wanted to think that last night had been a sign that Rosemary was not so indifferent to him as she claimed to be, but he knew now how capable she was of faking emotions that were not there, and he couldn’t bring himself to trust that he’d seen something more than sheer physical lust from her.

The lust, at least, he could be sure of.

He had slept like the dead, waking up to a bed just as empty as the one he’d clambered into the night before and the smell of coffee wafting through Rosemary’s apartment. He rolled over to snag his glasses off of Rosemary’s bedside table and frowned at the time, then remembered with relief that it was Saturday. He still needed to go in to the lab and check on the progress of the current batch of rats, of course, but Carter’s productivity statistics treated weekend work like a bonus, which meant that heading in late wouldn’t result in Rosemary sitting him down in a week or two to have a talk about keeping regular hours.

Karl found his clothing and dressed, then opened the door to the bedroom cautiously. There was no sign of Rosemary, so he made his way to the front door in stockinged feet, hoping to escape without disturbing her at whatever morning routine she was about.

Rosemary appeared at her kitchen doorway as he tried to sneak past, fully dressed and obviously ready for the day. “Coffee?”

Karl removed his hand from the knob to the front door—not that trying it would have done much good with the chain still up, he noted with mild dismay—and turned to face her. “Thank you,” he said stiffly. “May I use the bathroom first?”

Rosemary gave him a little nod, just as stiff as his voice had been, and he turned again and fled into the bathroom, not quite slamming the door shut behind himself. And then he dropped his shoes and leaned forward against the bathroom sink, trying to shove down a sudden surge of anxiety.

Sex with Rosemary was one thing. Even dinner last night hadn’t been about the food; it had been about the tension between them, the build-up to what came after.

But if he sat down and had coffee with her, that was something else entirely.

Karl laughed shakily at his reflection. Wasn’t that what he had been hoping for? Every time he’d heard Rosemary’s partner—no, her playmate—leave her apartment right after they’d had sex, hadn’t he been thinking to himself that if it were him in that man’s place, he wouldn’t be so hasty to leave her side?

But he’d imagined a Rosemary warm and comforting, a Rosemary, who, despite her occasionally prickly nature, was as open and cheerful as the Rosemary who always flirted with him had seemed to be. And as much as he wanted to pretend that this woman was that Rosemary, he knew now that it was all a show.

He shut his eyes and sighed, then used the toilet, washed his hands, set his glasses aside for a moment so that he could splash cold water over his face. Karl had hoped to find the cold water bracing, but it mostly just left him feeling damp and even more awkward than he’d already been.

As Karl left the bathroom again, dropping his shoes in the entryway this time, he glanced at the front door to her apartment and noticed that Rosemary must have opened all the locks for him while he was in the bathroom. He even considered running for a brief moment, but he wasn’t so much of a coward that he couldn’t face Rosemary over a cup of coffee in her apartment, was he? No, of course not.

Rosemary waited by the coffeemaker, her back to the doorway into the kitchen, giving Dr. Kelley every possible opportunity to run away, hoping that he’d take it.

And hoping all the same that he’d stay.

She shouldn’t be encouraging this, not in him and not in her, but damn if it hadn’t been nice the past two nights to have the sound of another person breathing next to her in bed, to be less alone in this apartment of hers.

There, Rosemary admitted it, if only to herself. She was lonely. Seeing Al once every two or three months when he could make time for her really wasn’t enough. But she hadn’t expected to like this so much, the strange domesticity that she and Dr. Kelley had fallen into almost without thinking last night. And she definitely hadn’t expected to like sharing her bed all night with another person, but here she was, having enjoyed it a great deal.

There was the soft pad of socks on the linoleum of the kitchen floor, and Dr. Kelley cleared his throat. Rosemary poured him a mug of coffee without looking his direction and refilled her own, and turned and brought them over to the table, where Dr. Kelley was standing awkwardly.

“Sit. Relax. Drink coffee. It’s a Saturday, after all.”

“Thank you,” he said, his voice still stiff and overly cautious, as if he was unsure about how to negotiate the current situation. Rosemary hid her smile in a sip from her mug, equal parts amused and empathetic. After all, it wasn’t as if she knew any better what she was doing. It had been decades since she’d last slept all night in the same bed as another person, and that person she hadn’t been having sex with.

It forced a strange sort of intimacy, sleeping in the same bed.

Work. Talking about work would provide them both with some much-needed distance from last night. “Who’s on rat duty this morning? Aditi or Tomas?” Rosemary asked, holding her mug in both hands, barely registering the warmth of it.

Dr. Kelley stared down at his mug with a frown. “I am not certain.” There. His voice was less stiff, at least.

“I think it’s Aditi, but I know she asked for a weekend off this month and for the life of me I can’t remember which weekend it was.” Rosemary took another sip of her coffee. “I’ll swing by once I’m out of here and make sure this morning’s samples got taken care of.”

Dr. Kelley glanced up at her, meeting her eye… and then blushing quite expressively. His gaze snapped back to his coffee cup. “I will take care of it.”

Rosemary glared. “Do I need to have the ‘appropriate tasks for people with as many doctorates as you have’ talk with you again?”

Dr. Kelley shot a glare of his own her way. “We have spoken about moving Decima research to space. Will I have lab assistant there, to do all dirty work? Or will I and my doctorates be keeping things clean and taking samples?”

Rosemary shrugged. “It really depends on where you are, but yes, most crews will have at least one or two members who are well-versed in the gruntwork of keeping a lab running.”

Dr. Kelley opened his mouth as if to respond, then sighed and shook his head, picking up his mug and taking a sip of his own coffee.

“What?” asked Rosemary.

“You are a truly infuriating woman,” Dr. Kelley muttered. “Always an answer for everything.”

Rosemary laughed. “Being infuriating is part of the job description.” She took a contemplative sip of her own coffee, then added, “Well, at least when you work for William Carter.”

Dr. Kelley let out a sharp bark of laughter, and just like that, what remained of the tension and stiffness between them evaporated. They finished their coffee in a companionable sort of silence, and when they were done, Rosemary took Dr. Kelley’s mug and rinsed it as he shoved his shoes on.

“Thank you for coffee,” he said, pausing for a moment at her front door as she bustled out of the kitchen, on her way to the bathroom for a final touch-up of her lipstick. “And thank you for offer to look in on lab rats.”

“You’re welcome,” Rosemary said, trying to keep the smile that had forced its way onto her face in the territory of the smoothly neutral, and suspecting that she was failing horribly. Or at least, Dr. Kelley’s reaction to the smile on her face was to give her a long, intent look, and for just a moment she thought he might bend over and kiss her cheek.

But instead he shook his head and gave her a thin little smile in return, the corners of his mouth just quirking up, and he left her apartment. A few moments later Rosemary heard his keys in the lock of his own apartment, breaking the stillness that had seized her when she’d thought he was about to bend down and kiss her cheek.

“Well. There’s that,” she said out loud to herself. “Two nights. You can give yourself two nights. But that’s enough, Rosemary.”

After all, she was used to being lonely.

By the time Karl made it to the lab complex, the samples were drawn and the cages were cleaned, though whoever had done it had forgotten to initial the report. Still, he thought he recognized Rosemary’s round, sprawling handwriting in the numbers, and it made him smile.

It made him want to seek her out, when normally he wouldn’t see her again until Monday. But no, no, that wouldn’t do. He didn’t want her getting sick of the sight of him, after all. Not when he hoped he might be able to convince her to let him spend another night in her bed.

So instead he checked slides, inspected fecal matter, checked the condition of the rats. Two more had died overnight, bringing the casualties of this strain of Decima to eight, though the condition of the remaining twelve seemed to be holding steady. Of course, despite the presence of Decima in the blood samples, there was no sign of mutation, no sign that the retrovirus was making progress. Karl sighed and set the last slide aside. Well. He’d hoped to lower the virulence of this batch, but perhaps he’d gone a bit too far in the wrong direction.

Karl spent the rest of the day hunched over a notepad, occasionally moving around the lab to check available cell cultures, to dig out notes on previous strains of Decima and what samples remained. It felt like he was starting all over again, and by the time he hauled himself off to the cafeteria for lunch, he was sore from hunching over and frustrated by his lack of progress.

He’d hoped that a break from work and the walk to the cafeteria would get his mind working, but the weather was hot and muggy, and instead he was soaked in sweat and irritable by the time he returned to his lab. He tossed aside his Decima notes and instead picked up one of the side projects that Rosemary had given him a few weeks before and that he hadn’t spent nearly enough time on: a certain fungal growth that had been growing in one of the incubators in his lab for the past few weeks, and which needed to be tested for various properties. But no, the fungal growth had gone to spore at some point over the past few weeks, and he would need to start the growth cycle all over again. After, of course, removing the remaining spores from the incubator and sterilizing it.

Well. Might as well take care of that himself.

As the day had gone on, as Karl had grown more and more frustrated with nothing working quite as it should, his mind had drifted more and more often towards thoughts of Rosemary. After all, it wasn’t hard at all for him to redirect frustration with Decima into a different sort of frustration altogether, especially when he knew exactly how to make that particular type of frustration go away. And there was no chance that he was going to pass up a chance to relieve some of this frustration… that was, of course, if he could convince Rosemary to let him into her apartment tonight.

When he knocked on her apartment door that night, Rosemary opened it with an irritable “Twice was fine, Doctor Kelley, but three times is a habit.”

Karl simply looked her up and down, a hot, searing look, and said “Ah, but I so wanted to taste you again, suka.”

He hadn’t expected it to work, not really, but Rosemary’s mouth fell open and she blushed so hard it was visible, even against the warm brown of her skin. Then she simply stepped backwards into her apartment, and he stalked in after her, a predatory smile on his face as he locked up behind himself and followed her further into the apartment.

Neither of them remembered to eat dinner. They were so exhausted after he was done with her and she was done with him that neither of them had the energy to do more than collapse on her bed and fall asleep, cautiously keeping to either edge of the bed in the night.

All the same, Karl couldn’t help but feel triumphant as he dozed off.

November 25th, 1990

They woke up starving, and while Rosemary showered, Karl raided her fridge and came up with the ingredients for a pair of quite passable omelettes. Though at that point he suspected both of them would have eaten anything placed in front of them.

They ate breakfast together, stiff and uncomfortable with one another once again, and then went their separate ways, off to Sunday routines of cleaning, laundry, what little rest and relaxation they could fit in around the work in the lab that still needed to be done. Or at least he did; he had no idea what her idea of rest and relaxation looked like. Perhaps she spent most of her day over in the lab complex as well, doing more filing.

Halfway through the afternoon, they met in passing in the laundry room in the basement of the apartment building, him with a basket of mixed clothing, her with an armload of blouses, and both pretended they were merely indifferent acquaintances.

Maybe they were.

Of course, that hadn’t stopped Karl from wanting to throw his basket of clothing aside so he could press Rosemary into the wall of the laundry room and kiss her senseless, an urge he definitely did not give in to; after all, she hadn’t once kissed him on the mouth, even after three nights together. The knowledge that he didn’t have to kiss her on the mouth to kiss her senseless did make the prospect more tempting, however.

That night, when he returned from a final check on the lab rats, Karl wanted to go straight to Rosemary’s apartment. But instead he hesitated, remembering her comment from the night before about habits. So he ate dinner alone, a frozen meal heated in the microwave, and found he was only picking at it. It was somehow both bland and over-salted at once, and he thought he would be happy to eat anything else, even one of Rosemary’s terrible casseroles. And from the smell that had been wafting down the hallway when he’d returned to the apartment complex, he suspected one would be on offer, if he chose to knock on her door.

Before he had quite realized what he was doing, he scraped the remains of the meal into the waste disposal in the kitchen sink and left his apartment for the one next door.

This time Rosemary opened her door at his knock as if she’d been anticipating him.

“Oh, good. I’ve made entirely too much food for myself,” she said, her face falsely bright. “You can help me eat it.”

He almost laughed at that, at how transparent an excuse it was to get him in her apartment, but instead he just smiled thinly and said “I suppose I am hungry enough to tolerate your terrible cooking,” and followed her inside.

Their conversation over dinner was far less awkward than the brief nothings they’d exchanged at breakfast. And the sex afterwards… well, that was one place it seemed they would never be awkward with one another at all.

Karl seemed to have learned by now not to try kissing her on the mouth, but he also seemed to have taken that as a challenge tonight, undressing her slowly once they made their way to her bedroom, hunting down every soft and sensitive spot on the front of her body and and using lips and tongue to tease her until Rosemary was writhing and gasping under him. And then he coaxed her over onto her stomach and began again, starting with a line of kisses down her spine that left her shivering. Every time she reached for him, he pressed her hand back to the bed along with a growled “Not yet, suka,” that left her just as weak and shivery as his kisses were.

Finally, finally he let her roll onto her side and reach for him, but all she had the presence of mind for was to pull him close and press soft, yearning kisses to his shoulder, his neck, the glorious sweep of one of his prominent cheekbones. And then, there they were, face-to-face, his breath warm against her lips, and oh, she tried.

But after a long, quiet moment where Rosemary couldn’t quite bring herself to move that fraction of an inch closer, Karl nodded and went to the drawer of her bedside table for a condom instead.

She hated him a little bit for this, hated that he made her want to kiss him properly, when she’d been doing just fine without for so long. Hated that he accepted without question that she was the one who would have to take that step, when it would have been so easy to just yield to him if he insisted. And then she could have hated him properly, would have what she needed to shove him out of her mind and out of her bed. But this goddamn consideration… no. She had no tools in her arsenal for dealing with this.

He pulled her over him, but still did most of the work, thrusting up against her, working a hand down between them to make sure she came before he did. And then, just when it was almost too much for her to still have him inside, he let out a strangled cry and pulled her close against him, burying his face against her neck as he shuddered under her.

Rosemary let him hold her tonight, the way he’d tried to that first morning. His fingers stroked gently down her spine and she shut her eyes, and for a short while she was completely relaxed, in a way she hadn’t been for a very long time.

That night, when she came back to her bed and found Karl already asleep on the far side of it, she gave in to the urge to slide a little closer once she was in bed to tuck her cold feet close to his calves, where the heat of his body had warmed the blankets.


	18. 25 Nights, part 2, aka two people over the age of 45 continue to have unrealistic amounts of sexual stamina

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even More Smut, including some light bondage and also some growing emotional intimacy if you’re into that kind of thing

November 26th, 1990

Rosemary made coffee for them both that morning, and they sat in silence, preparing themselves mentally for the week ahead. Karl finished his coffee quickly, leaving her apartment to take a shower in his own, then went in search of breakfast at the cafeteria, not thinking about Rosemary again until she stormed into his lab, irritable and sarcastic, at two-thirty in the afternoon.

“You are late for your check-in, Doctor Kelley,” she said, glaring at him. “And worse than that, you left your lab phone off the hook. I do make allowances for your forgetfulness, but this is the third week in a row. Do I need to set an alarm?”

He looked up from his work, startled, having almost forgotten this Rosemary existed after the past few nights spent in her bed. He had forgotten their meeting, too; he’d had a sudden brainstorm about the issues with the current strain of Decima early that morning, and hadn’t even remembered to eat lunch. His stomach chose to punctuate the silence after her chastisement with a loud growl, and she sighed and rubbed two fingers against her temple.

“Honestly, you are hopeless,” she muttered, glancing around the controlled chaos that always typified his lab when he’d had a particularly productive streak of ideas and then back at him. “Did you not even remember the stash of protein bars I put in here?”

He shook his head, shame-faced, and she went over to the cabinet in question and rooted around for a moment, pulling out a protein bar and tossing it at his head. Her aim was remarkably good, and it was only quick thinking on his part that stopped the protein bar from taking out his glasses.

“Eat,” she said, glaring at him again. “And then you’re going to finish wrangling whatever caused all this—” she gestured expressively at the mess in his lab “—and then you are going to come to my office for your check-in, and if I’m not there, you’ll just have to be the one to wait for me, hm?”

He nodded again, already ripping in to the package of the protein bar, suddenly starving, and she stalked out of his lab, obviously in high dudgeon.

Of course, Rosemary in high dudgeon was quite a remarkable sight to watch from behind, and he enjoyed the view for the few moments it took her to exit his lab and for him to finish his protein bar.

When Karl finally made it to Rosemary’s office, it was empty except for her assistant, Charles, who told Karl in an officious tone that Miss Epps was helping put out a fire over in one of the other labs, and no, Charles didn’t know for sure whether it was a metaphorical fire or an literal one, but that wasn’t any of Dr. Kelley’s business, now was it?

Karl sighed, and sat in one of the guest chairs at Rosemary’s desk. He wouldn’t have put it beyond her to manufacture a crisis just to make him wait, a way of punishing him for his forgetfulness earlier in the day. Charles finished whatever small task he was working on and left Karl in the office, leaving door open behind him. And then, Karl waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After half an hour, he started to wish he’d brought another one of the protein bars with him, but then Rosemary bustled in and around him to sit at her desk, and he forgot his hunger at the sight of her.

“Well,” she said, in the bitchiest version of her corporate drone voice as she sat down and pulled a folder out of her desk drawer, “Shall we finally get on with it?”

She seemed to be displeased with everything they covered in that day’s meeting, but despite all that, all of her complaints and critical comments about his work were fair, damn her, especially after the incident with the fungal growth. He wondered, briefly, if she was being extra harsh to make sure he continued to hate her, but then he thought back on past meetings with her and realized that no, this was just how she was. Tough, and occasionally a bit of a bitch, but fair.

He offered up what notes he’d put together today on Decima as a sacrificial lamb at the end of the meeting, and she sighed and took them, flipping through with a frown on her face. “You’re right. There’s promise there, but I think it needs a day or two more to percolate. Work on something else for a bit. You’re weeks overdue with the report on those bacterial cultures, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he admitted, shamefaced.

“Well. Hop to it, then.”

By the time he got back to his lab, his head was so full of the changes he needed to make to his current side projects that his memory of being hungry didn’t resurface until well after ten that night.

The cafeteria was closed, and he was so hungry that he didn’t think protein bars would be sufficient. But he couldn’t face another bland frozen meal, and as dreadful as the casserole Rosemary had served him last night had been, he found himself thinking of the leftovers with a bit of longing.

So, with a bit of trepidation, he headed back to the apartments and knocked on Rosemary’s door.

Rosemary answered the door in her robe and let out an irritated huff at the sight of him. “You didn’t make it to the cafeteria in time, did you?” she said, glaring at him. “Well, I suppose I better feed you.”

She fed him.

And then he made sure she was very, very aware of how grateful he was for the meal.  
  


November 27th, 1990

Karl woke up in the middle of the night to find that Rosemary had shifted closer to him in her sleep. Her back was to him, but she’d tucked her feet—her surprisingly cold feet, for all they must have been under the covers for hours by this point—up against his legs. He smiled and rolled onto his side, curling up behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist and nuzzling against the back of her neck.

He had spent the past few nights expecting that she’d kick him out of her apartment after they were done, but some part of him had grown used to the sound of her whispery little snore next to him in bed over the few short nights they’d spent together and didn’t want to give it up. He’d even resorted to subterfuge to stay in her bed; after all, she didn’t seem willing to kick him out if he fell asleep before she finished in the bathroom, and if he couldn’t manage to fall asleep in that time… well, he’d gotten very good at faking it over the past few nights.

The warmth of Rosemary’s body tucked against his chest lulled Karl back to sleep within minutes, and he didn’t wake again until she shifted against him and lifted his arm carefully from her midsection. He clung to her for a moment, almost without thinking, and pressed a needy little kiss to the back of her neck.

“Not enough time.” Rosemary’s voice was raspy with sleep. “Not if we want coffee, at least,” she added, glancing over her shoulder at him.

“You are much more appealing at the moment than coffee is,” Karl growled.

“Try saying that once the caffeine headache sets in.”

He pressed another needy kiss to her shoulder. “I will bring you coffee from cafeteria.”

“Tempting, but no.” Rosemary lifted his hand from her side again, then slid off the bed. “I’ve got a month-end check-in with Carter today. Can’t go into that unprepared and under-caffeinated.”

Karl grabbed his glasses off Rosemary’s bedside table and sat up, leaning against the headboard of her bed, watching her bustle around the bedroom, pull a fresh blouse out of the closet, inspect several suits before deciding on a rather sedate navy blue one. Of course, this was Rosemary, so the sedate suit was joined by a rather shocking ascot patterned in lime green and teal and matching accessories. And then she disappeared from the bedroom, probably heading towards the bathroom, not once during this entire process looking back at him.

Karl sighed and got out of bed himself. He gathered up his clothing and got dressed, heading for the door, planning to put a pot of coffee on to brew in his own apartment while he showered. But as he undid the chain on the front door of Rosemary’s apartment, she poked her head out of the bathroom.

“Come back here for coffee?” she asked. There was the slightest crease between her eyebrows, a bare touch of anxiety in her voice.

Karl suppressed the wide smile that wanted to take over his face. “Of course.”

Mr. Carter set aside the last of the end-of-month reports that Rosemary had for him with a hm of satisfaction. “As usual, your work is excellent.”

“That is what you pay me for, sir,” Rosemary said in a dry tone.

“Indeed. Though you may want to keep a closer eye on Kelley and Gao. It sounds like you’ve had trouble getting work from them in a timely manner.”

“I think I’ve got Kelley in hand,” Rosemary said, feeling the irony of the phrasing keenly and hoping that her face wasn’t giving anything away. After all, Dr. Kelley had gotten her the overdue report on those bacterial cultures that morning, and she’d reminded him about a few other little projects with looming due dates. Carter didn’t need to know that the sentence could have easily had a double meaning. “But Gao…” Rosemary sighed. “She might need one of your little talks, sir.”

“Well. How unfortunate. I’ll see if I can schedule her in before the end of the year. You said you had some other matters you wanted to discuss?”

“Some files from earlier this year that should probably head Adriane’s way. I just want to double-check my instincts, if you have a moment to look them over.” Rosemary handed the file folder over, and Carter opened it, flipping through.

“Asking permission to archive these projects for good?”

“And making sure none are so secure they belong in the Black.”

Carter scanned the list she’d provided at the front of the folder. “Is this one folder everything?”

“Everything important, but there are a few things on that list that I haven’t bothered with because I’ll need file boxes to move them out. The highlighted ones.”

Carter picked up a pen and made a few notes. “Consult Adriane on these. We may have duplicates, given the overlap with Engineering.” He shut the folder and handed it back. “Otherwise, archive away, though do discuss clearance levels with Adriane when you bring them in. She makes such a fuss when you lot accidentally leave high-clearance materials with her assistants.”

Rosemary suppressed a sigh and smiled blandly at Carter. She always made sure the high-clearance stuff went directly to Adriane. It wasn’t Rosemary’s fault that most of the other lab managers were so terrified of the woman that they didn’t dare ask Adriane to do her job. “Yes, sir. Will that be all?”

“Oh, yes. And do enjoy your trip to the archives.”

Rosemary suppressed a real smile. “I always do.”

Adriane frowned down at the stack of file boxes that Rosemary had just wheeled into her office on a dolly. “You must be joking.”

“Afraid not. I’ll give you a hand, though; I know where everything starts and ends and I can give you a rundown of the basics of each project, if that will help, and I’ve got nothing pressing for the next hour or so.”

Adriane gave Rosemary a sharp look. “You said you met with Carter earlier today?”

Rosemary had opened the top box and was scanning the files it contained. “Yeah, why?” Came her absentminded response.

“Because usually after a meeting with Carter you’re intend on spreading the misery around, not on being helpful.”

Rosemary looked up, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “Am I?”

“You would normally abandon me to these boxes.”

“Well, you’re normally such a curmudgeon that you’d deserve it,” Rosemary said, turning back to the files. “This lot are all low-priority and can just be chucked on a shelf or whatever it is you lot do back there. Shall I hand them off to Florence?”

“Please.”

Rosemary hefted the box off the pile and Adriane came around her desk to inspect the rest of them. Rosemary being who she was, the boxes already had fairly complete content lists taped to the top, but Adriane had to admit that Rosemary’s expertise when it came to explaining scientific research for the layperson would come in handy for sorting the papers. The only science Adriane was well-versed in was computer science.

“Right. Florence groaned and slumped over her desk, so I think that’s her set for the next hour or two. Shall we get on with these?”

The two of them dealt swiftly with the contents of the remaining file boxes, moving them to a corner of Adriane’s office for further processing once the contents of a box were explained. Florence got another half-box of materials along the way, and another pile were set aside for shredding… and Rosemary continued to be far more cheerful than she had any right to be after an end-of-month meeting with William Carter.

Rosemary caught Adriane staring at her with a frown as they were finishing up. “What?”

“Have you had good news?”

Rosemary frowned. “Why do you ask?”

“You would normally have done your best to make my life more difficult today, Rosmarin.”

“I just… had a good weekend.” Rosemary looked uncomfortable all of a sudden, and then shrugged. “Al came by on Thanksgiving.”

Adriane’s frown smoothed itself out. Perhaps that could explain it. He had been on several long-term covert missions over the past year; Rosemary wasn’t the only person at Goddard who had been missing that man’s presence. “I see. He came just to see you, then?”

Rosemary smiled and relaxed. “A flying visit, he called it.”

No. The body language was all wrong; Rosemary was too relieved that Adriane had seemed to latch on to an explanation. It must be something else, then. But if Rosemary felt like being cagey about it, Adriane wasn’t going to push her. After all, Rosemary would tell her all about it, in the end.

“Give him my thanks the next time you see him,” Adriane said instead.

“Will do. Now, time for me to get back to the lab before there’s an uprising against my despotic rule. Bis später, Liebchen.”

“Bis später, Rosmarin.”

There was a knock on Rosemary’s door as she pulled her plate of leftover casserole out of the microwave, and she smiled and put the second plate she’d prepared into the microwave before going to answer her door. As she’d expected, it was Dr. Kelley. “Anything good at the cafeteria tonight?”

He shook his head and gave her a pitiful look. “I am starving.”

Rosemary suppressed a laugh. “Well, come on in. I’ve still got leftovers. Not that they’re any better than what you’d get in the cafeteria.”

He followed her to the kitchen and pulled silverware out as she moved the plates of re-heated chicken casserole to the table. It really was much worse than the cafeteria served most nights, but Dr. Kelley ate it with every sign of enjoyment, or at least no obvious signs of disgust. And then, as he had every other time they’d eaten together, he did her dishes, including the casserole dish they’d just finished off. Rosemary would be eating food from the cafeteria for the rest of the week—after all, who had the time or energy to cook after a twelve hour day?—but it had been worth it.

After he finished the dishes, Karl came up behind her chair and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, bending down to kiss her neck. Rosemary had removed her jacket and ascot when she’d returned to the apartment building, undone the top couple of buttons of her blouse, but this was apparently insufficient for Karl, because he immediately undid two more buttons. She couldn’t see him, but she suspected he was peering over her shoulder and down her shirt.

He pressed another hot, needy kiss to the side of her neck. “Shall we go to bed now, suka?”

“You know, I can’t help but think that you’ve forgotten to hate me,” she said conversationally.

“Nonsense,” he growled. “You are a thundering bitch of a woman. I dislike you most intensely. It is simply your body—” he punctuated the word by sliding a hand down the front of her shirt, cupping one of her breasts, “—that I find appealing.” He bit down hard on the back of her neck, sending a shiver down her spine. “Come now. Let me take you to bed and fuck you senseless.”

Rosemary snorted, but she slid off her bed and followed him to the bedroom.

Tonight, she took control, grabbing one of his wrists and holding it over his head as she rode him. His eyes went wide and his breath seized in his throat, but he did not struggle against her. So she restrained the other hand as well, and he went frantic, straining and bucking up against her but not once protesting her hold on his wrists.

Karl’s orgasm seemed to take more out of him than it usually did, and he went limp and sated under her, shuddering and letting out little gasps of breath as she pulled herself off him.

“That was…” he murmured, as she settled at his side, not ready to leave him yet. He seemed to be trying to find the right words, but instead all he could do was shake his head and sigh.

“You liked that?”

He nodded.

When Rosemary returned from the bathroom Karl was sprawled across half the bed, and for all she knew it was a bad idea, she slid over close to him, tucked her head against his shoulder and wrapped an arm around his chest before drifting off to sleep herself.  
  


November 28th, 1990

The next morning, over their coffee, Rosemary kept looking his way with a contemplative expression on her face. She’d rested an elbow on the table and her chin in her hand, and every once in a while she rubbed her thumb over her lower lip, as if considering something.

Karl thought he should probably worry about whatever was causing her to look at him this way, but that gesture kept distracting him.

“Is something wrong, suka?” he asked.

Rosemary seemed to wake up at that, and shook her head. “No, just thinking about my day.”

Karl couldn’t tell if that was a lie or not.

That night, he almost didn’t go to her. But then he considered his empty bed, the warm space Rosemary always left at his side when she invariably got up before him, and knew that until she turned him away, he would come back to her again and again.

“I’ve got cheese and crackers for dinner, but that’s about it,” Rosemary said when she answered the door.

“Will most likely be better than your casserole.”

Rosemary rolled her eyes, but stepped backwards and let him in her apartment.

Karl slid up behind her as she pulled cheese and summer sausage out of her fridge, wrapping his arms around her so that he could unbutton her suit jacket. She let out a sigh of exasperation and shoved his hands off her.

“Can’t you even wait until after dinner?”

“You will be more comfortable if we get rid of your jacket.” Karl slid his hands down the curve of her lower back and she shivered under his touch.

“Fine.” Rosemary threw the items down on the counter. “You’re in charge of cutting things up. I’m going to go change into my robe.” She whirled around him and made her way out of the kitchen.

Karl considered following her, but he was a little too hungry to consider going without dinner. He’d forgotten lunch and eaten two of protein bars Rosemary had stashed in his lab for him in the early afternoon, but if he didn’t eat dinner, he’d be ravenous tomorrow morning… and if he followed Rosemary into her bedroom while she stripped out of the day’s clothing, he would definitely forget to eat dinner. So instead he poked around her kitchen, finding a cutting board and knife, arranging slices of cheese and sausage on a plate, eventually locating a box of rather stale crackers in one of the lower cabinets.

He heard the faucet running in the bathroom for a few minutes, and then Rosemary joined him again, wrapped up in that oversized red robe that somehow managed to be incredibly tempting when wrapped around Rosemary’s body, her face washed clean, her wig removed.

It took a great deal of willpower to say “Come eat your supper, suka,” instead of dragging her back to her bedroom immediately.

Rosemary paused in the doorway to her kitchen for a long moment. God, the way Karl looked at her—even now, even when she was in a ratty old robe, even without the makeup and hair and all the trappings that smoothed out her appearance into something almost acceptable for society…

How could he look at her like that? How could he seem to mean it?

He’d placed two plates on the center of the little round table in her kitchen, one loaded with cheese and sausage, one with a pile of crackers. It really wasn’t much of a dinner, but it was slightly more dinner-like than just eating a protein bar or two, or even, god forbid, having ramen. Not that there was anything wrong with ramen, especially when she added some extra seasonings and a packet of frozen vegetables, but her stomach no longer handled such fare as well as it had when she was younger.

Rosemary was far too old to still be eating like a college student, but sometimes working at Goddard didn’t leave her time for anything else. She didn’t like to admit it, but Karl’s company made the whole thing just a little more tolerable than it normally was.

“Long day?” he asked as she hopped up on her chair.

“Mm. I was down in Pryce’s lair most of the day,” Rosemary said, loading a cracker up and stuffing it in her mouth. She was starving.

“Was wondering. You normally drop by on Wednesdays to check progress.” Dr. Kelley snagged a few pieces of cheese—a small chunk of cheddar and a slice of the really nice Swiss they’d randomly had in the campus store last week—and ate them in quick succession. He seemed to be as ravenous as she was.

Or perhaps he just wanted to get through the preliminaries quickly. Given what she had planned tonight, Rosemary certainly did. The conversation came to a halt by what seemed to be an unspoken mutual understanding, and instead they focused on eating.

When both plates were empty, Karl asked solicitously, “Would you care for more?”

Rosemary shook her head. “I want plenty of time for what I’ve got planned tonight.”

One of Karl’s eyebrows rose curiously. “Ah, you have plans? That is new.”

“Oh?”

“This entire thing has seemed entirely unplanned, suka. Be careful. You might give me hope for a future.” His voice was light and teasing, but Rosemary thought that perhaps there was some real feeling behind the words.

Rosemary snorted and rolled her eyes, trying to deliberately turn the mood ridiculous. “Not that kind of plan.”

“What kind of plan did you have in mind, then?”

“Why don’t you come to my bedroom and see?

The seventh night they spent together, Karl walked in to Rosemary’s bedroom to find she’d attached restraints to her bed, not the medical sort, but padded and black and meant to hold a person’s wrists and legs spread-eagle on the bed.

He stood there, jaw hanging open, hardly registering the click as she shut her bedroom door behind them.

Rosemary’s arms wrapped around him from behind, and she started touching him, undressing him. “They’re for you,” she purred against his neck, grinding her hips against him from behind, one of her hands stroking his cock.

“I am not… oh blyad, suka, how can I trust you like this?” he groaned, thrusting against her hand.

“You can trust me,” she said, pressing a kiss to the back of his shoulder. He could feel the smile on her lips.

He let her tie him up.

And the danger of it, the worry that this woman was not quite safe enough to be trusted, turned what might have simply been a pleasurable encounter into something transcendental.  
  


November 29th, 1990

The next morning, Karl was the one staring at Rosemary, his eyes wary as he watched her calmly sip her coffee and make a list on a piece of scrap paper of things that needed to happen that day.

What might he let her do to him if he actually could trust her? He didn’t know, but he had started to wonder now.

She came by his lab for a brief check-in that afternoon, asking how the second attempt at the fungal growth was going, checking in on the progress he’d made on the new approach he’d been considering to Decima, offering her usual insightful questions and commentary on both. And though she did not mention a single thing about the night before, his entire body screamed with awareness at her presence.

After she left his lab, all he could do was sit and stare into space for more minutes than he cared to admit. Eventually, he came back to himself and cursed.

She was right to keep insisting that he find reasons to hate her. Because if he didn’t, he’d have to admit that it would be all to easy to love her instead.

A week, Rosemary told herself. A week is long enough.

She didn’t know who she was kidding, trying to tell herself that, because a week wasn’t nearly long enough. She’d been attracted to Dr. Kelley—to Karl—since the moment she finally met him face-to-face. And she’d been interested in him for a long time before then, ever since Viktor Stukov had first mentioned Dmitri Vologin and his retrovirus research initiative, especially after the initial background check they’d run on Vologin had come back.

You can take the girl out of the microbiology department, but you can’t take the microbiologist out of the girl, Rosemary’s brain supplied, a rather odd mangling of a saying that seemed strangely apt at the current moment. Of course she’d been interested. It was her area of expertise, the subject area that kept sucking her in again and again, and she hadn’t had a microbiologist or virologist in her department in more than ten years.

It had been good, the past twenty-odd months, to have someone she could toss all the annoying micro research projects she’d been saving up at someone. To see if her theories about how they’d turn out were correct.

It had been good, to see how Decima had progressed, even if Dr. Kelley seemed to feel it wasn’t progressing nearly quickly enough.

And for the past week, it had been good to have him in her bed, warm and snoring at her side.

But Rosemary didn’t have time for good, and even if she did… well, someone like her didn’t deserve it. So it was time to put a stop to it.

Her thoughts were running along these lines that night, when Karl finally knocked on her door. She wouldn’t answer. This is a bad habit, she told herself. It was a habit, and habits could be broken, habits needed to be broken, especially ones that interfered with her productivity.

Not that this one was interfering. Not yet. But soon, it might, and she needed to stop before it got to that point.

He knocked a second time, more hesitant, and then she heard the sound of his footsteps moving away from the door and she was at it in a rush, flinging it open, making some half-hearted excuse about having dozed off on the couch.

Karl looked as if he hadn’t bought that excuse, but he didn’t comment on it, and when she stepped back and opened her door wider for him he was through it in an instant, flinging it shut behind him and leaning down to press a kiss to the pulse point on her neck, right below her ear.

That night he was tender with her, careful, as if he’d suddenly realized how fragile this entire thing was.

Karl didn’t believe Rosemary when she said she’d dozed off on the couch, but he wasn’t inclined to push on that score. Not when she was warm and soft in his arms, not when she was tilting her head to one side to give him better access to her neck, not when her arms went around his waist and pulled him close against her body. She let out a whispery little sigh as he nuzzled her neck gently, then pressed another kiss to it.

“Did you already eat dinner?” Her tone was distracted.

“Yes,” Karl said. It wasn’t much of a lie; after all, he had finally gotten to a midday meal around four, after she’d left his lab that afternoon. After he’d finished staring into space, trying to remind himself that despite the fact that she was incredibly attractive, she had a dreadful personality. Trying to remind himself that she must be the one who reported everything he did to Mr. Carter, that she was so good at hiding her true feelings that who knew what she might be thinking. “Did you eat?”

“Yes, I ate.” Rosemary said, and a slight skip of hesitation in her words left him wondering what, if anything, that evening meal had consisted of.

But now that he had her, he was impatient, so instead he took her down the hall to her bedroom. She was still wearing her skirt and blouse, still in her wig, “wearing her hair,” as she liked to put it. He reached up and brushed the tall bangs of the wig away from her forehead, then leaned down and pressed a kiss to it. “Take your wig off and come to bed, suka,” he said, leaning down to whisper against her ear. Let me make love to you, Karl wanted to say, but he suspected that if he did say that, he’d find himself back outside her apartment door in an instant.

Rosemary went silently over to her chest of drawers, looking in the mirror perched on it as she carefully removed her wig, as she removed the wig cap beneath. As she took care of her hair, Karl stripped swiftly out of his own clothing, then crossed the room to her. He undid the hook and eye on her skirt and unzipped it, then let it fall to the ground, where Rosemary stepped out of it. He reached around her and started on the buttons of her blouse from the bottom up, undoing them slowly, nuzzling and kissing the back of her neck as he did. When Rosemary settled her wig on it’s stand, he slid the blouse off her arms, undid her bra, slid her panties down her hips. And then, for a moment, he wrapped his arms around her from behind and held her against his body and imagined that the reflection in the mirror of a man holding a woman close and careful, as if she was precious to him, was the reality of the situation.

But instead they had whatever it was between them, this lust that was still burning strong after a week together, this strange spark of attraction. Nothing precious here.

Still, he could not help taking that strange, tender feeling to the bed with him, could not help being gentle and careful with Rosemary tonight.

And although he knew she could work him into a frenzy if she chose, she let him.

November 30th, 1990

Karl left the lab a bit early that afternoon, wandering over to the campus store and browsing its limited selection of groceries. He’d have to figure out a way to get off of Goddard’s campus to a real grocery store tomorrow or Sunday, he decided, but for now he gathered up crackers and a selection of fancy cheeses, wondering as he did—and not for the first time, either—why the campus store had multiple kinds of fancy cheese but almost no fresh vegetables and only one kind of bread. No wonder Rosemary always resorted to particularly awful casseroles; they were easy to make from pre-packaged food. 

He laid in wait in his apartment until he heard the clatter of Rosemary’s keys in her lock, then he waited just a little bit longer. Perhaps he was hoping, just a little, that if he waited long enough she would come to him.

But his mind knew that was nonsense, and he went to her door, holding his purchases in front of him like an offering to a particularly tempestuous goddess. 

Rosemary opened the door with a very peculiar expression on her face, as if she was trying to hold a smile in check. And she was managing it, almost, but despite the fact that her mouth did not move at all when she saw him, her eyes almost seemed to glow with delight.

“You’ve gone shopping,” she said, looking down at the bag he was holding.

Karl nodded. “Nothing exciting. But at least these crackers are not stale,” he said, holding the bag up. “And there is an onion and a tomato as well.”

Rosemary laughed. “Staving off the scurvy, one vegetable at a time, I see.” She stepped back and let him into her apartment.

“Am not sure this tomato will do the job either, given the state of it. But neither of us eat as well as we should, so it is better than nothing.” Karl followed her into the kitchen and pulled Rosemary’s cutting board out of the cabinet it lived in.

Rosemary sighed. “I know. I suppose I could afford to order in something exciting every night, and god knows most of the restaurants downtown will do orders for Goddard up until midnight, but by the time my day is over…”

“You are too tired to decide what you want, let alone to order it.”

The corners of Rosemary’s mouth twitched upwards, then she wrestled her face back under control. “Something like that.”

Karl washed the tomato and pulled the skin off the onion, then set them on the cutting board, along with the cheese he’d purchased. “Do you still have sausage?”

Rosemary nodded, and pulled the remains of the summer sausage from a few nights before out of the fridge. “Anything else?”

Karl shook his head. “Go change into your robe. I will take care of supper.”

Rosemary gave him a long, steady look, then nodded again and disappeared from the kitchen.

Rosemary shut her bedroom door behind her and slumped back against it, trying to shove down the panicked sob that was sitting in her lungs, trying to escape. Why the hell did he have to be so damn kind?

This would be easier if he weren’t kind. A man like that, a man who had lived the life he’d lived, should have had all the kindness beaten out of him long ago, shouldn’t have any left to give to her.

She bit the inside of her lower lip hard, tasted the coppery bloom of blood, and it was enough; she was able to straighten up, to go find her robe, get undressed, remove her wig, go to the bathroom and wash her makeup off. And then she stood there in the bathroom for a long, quiet moment, looking herself in the mirror.

Well, Rosemary, she told herself, time to bring an end to it. Time to remind him that you’re a bitch and chase him off.

After dinner, though, she added. After all, she was hungry.

Rosemary seemed to have gained control of her smile while she’d been out of the kitchen, Karl noticed. She gave him another of those long, steady looks instead.

“Why are you here?” she asked, a little frown between her eyebrows.

Karl gestured at the plates he’d arranged on her kitchen table. “Dinner.”

The frown deepened for a moment, and then smoothed out. “You could have had dinner on your own. So why are you here?”

Karl looked her over slowly, taking in the robe, her bare face, the thin fuzz of hair on her scalp. “I thought that the reason would be obvious, suka. I have not yet tired of playing with you,” he growled.

And it was the truth, almost. But the truth was also that he had always craved her attention, had always enjoyed those little stolen moments they sometimes had in his lab, when she would let her guard down and joke with him, tease him, flirt with him.

Even if that flirting meant nothing, in the end.

But her breath caught when he growled at her, and her eyes widened, and it was enough to know she lusted after him, even if there was nothing more there. Even if he… no. Don’t think about it, he told himself. It wouldn’t do to think about the way he wanted so much more than she was willing to offer him, because he’d be disappointed.

Rosemary handed him a cracker just then, with a slice of brie and a piece of summer sausage and a thin sliver of onion all balanced precariously on it. He took it with a murmur of thanks, and both of them dug into the meal with abandon.

“You’re sleeping in your own bed tonight,” Rosemary said when she was done. “No more of this faking being asleep to stay where you are.”

Karl made a startled noise as he gathered up the empty plates. He hadn’t realized she’d noticed.

“You snore when you’re asleep.”

“I do not.”

“Then what have I been listening to at night through my bedroom wall for the past two years, a thunderstorm? You snore. Loudly. Must be that impressive schnoz of yours.”

Karl let out a sputter of laughter and glanced over his shoulder at her as he washed the plates. “Schnoz? The English language truly is peculiar.”

“Oh, come on, that one’s Germanic in origin, you can’t make fun of me for that one,” Rosemary said, indignant. “It’s not my fault English has pillaged every language that stood still long enough for it to get a good grip.”

“You prove my point. Languages do not pillage. I can only assume you are being deliberately ridiculous.”

Rosemary laughed at that. “Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean the English language doesn’t go pillaging.”

“And how would you know what pillaging looks like, hm? You are not viking.” He rinsed the last plate and turned to look at her properly. The smile she had been trying so hard to suppress earlier in the evening had come back, lighting up her face.

“And what would you know about pillaging yourself?”

“Let me show you,” he growled.

Rosemary found she couldn't quite catch her breath as Karl swept her off to her bedroom. She hadn’t meant to let him get to her bedroom at all, had meant to kick him out after dinner, but she couldn’t quite resist the way this man looked at her.

He almost tossed her into her bedroom in front of him, and then stalked in after her, shutting the door deliberately behind himself, and although Rosemary knew she had no call to be frightened of this man, there was a pleasant little thrill of fear to the the situation all the same.

She had turned to face him, started to reach for him, but he took her by the wrists and did not allow her to touch him as he backed her slowly and deliberately towards the bed.

God, he was still fully clothed and here she was, in just her robe, a robe that had come a little loose while she’d been sitting at the dinner table and which was now on the verge of falling open. “Let me undress you,” she said, desperately wanting control, but not wanting to resort to any of the tricks Al had taught her over the years for breaking free from another person.

Karl shook his head, and Rosemary swallowed, hard. And then the backs of her thighs hit the edge of the bed and somehow, she was perched on the very edge of it all of a sudden, Karl crowded in very close against her, forcing her thighs apart. He opened the front of her robe and looked down at her, his gaze fixed and lustful.

“Now, suka, I will show you what pillaging looks like.”

Karl had apparently learned quite a lot about what bits of her body were most sensitive over the past week, because he proceeded to drive her senseless, perched there on the edge of her bed, her robe still on her shoulders but covering nothing at all. He was relentless; if she showed any sign of having enough presence of mind to try touching him, to try to get his clothing off, would switch to some new spot that had her gasping and moaning and, eventually, falling back against the bed, her legs still dangling over the side. Eventually, that turned into him kneeling on the floor next to her bed, his face buried between her thighs.

When finally, finally, she felt herself clench around the fingers he’d inserted in her, felt her back arch off the bed involuntarily, she felt well and truly pillaged.

Karl gentled her through her orgasm, then kissed his way up her stomach, coming to rest with his chin between her breasts. His expression as he stared up at her was almost adoring.

“Your turn?” Rosemary asked in a weak, breathless voice.

He shook his head. “No. It is late. Time for me to return to my own bed.”

A small sob wrenched its way out of her, along with a single word.

“Stay,” she begged him.

His eyes lit up.

He stayed.


	19. 25 Nights Part 3: No really, they should be spending their days too sore to move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continued smut and growing emotional intimacy

December 1st, 1990

Karl knew he was behind on work, on all those little projects Rosemary threw his way, knew he needed to spend the day in the lab, but the last of the most recent batch of rats had passed away the day before and he was no closer to figuring out what had gone wrong with this version of Decima. So instead, he threw caution to the wind, decided he could take one Saturday off, and called a taxi, meeting it at the gates of the Goddard complex. He took it downtown to the nearest grocery store and purchased all the things he had wanted to find in the on-campus store, but couldn’t. Beets, cabbage, parsnips, an assortment of other stew vegetables, beef bones for broth, spices, vinegar, sour cream… Rosemary had complained once that borscht tasted like sour dirt, but he thought, with the right incentive, she might change her mind.

It took him the rest of the day, working from a half-remembered recipe, first making the broth, then moving on to the soup itself, but finally the concoction simmering on his stove smelled and tasted right. It tasted like childhood, and like home, and he hoped she would like it too.

He heard her keys in the lock of her door, far earlier than she usually returned to the apartment complex, and dashed to his own door, opening it and calling her name.

“Rosemary!”

Rosemary popped her head back out her open door. “Hm? Oh! Something smells good.”

“Leave door open, I am coming over with dinner.”

She gave him a curious look, but left her door ajar and disappeared inside. He went back to his kitchen, putting a lid on the pot and settling the container of sour cream on top, scooping the entire thing up with oven mitts and carefully negotiating his way out the door of his own apartment and into hers, setting the pot down on the center of her kitchen table, then returning to his own apartment to shut and lock the door. When he returned, Rosemary looked up guiltily; she had already opened the pot and had obviously just eaten a spoonful of borscht straight from it.

Karl laughed at the expression on her face.

“What is this?” she asked, scooping up another spoonful. “I love it.”

“Borscht.”

The look of horror on her face made Karl laugh again.

Rosemary had gotten down bowls while he’d been doing a final check of his apartment, so he ladled borscht out for her, spooned sour cream on top, was even so ridiculous as to feed her a spoonful of the food he’d made for her from the bowl he’d prepared. She finished two bowls, and laughed ruefully. “You certainly are a much better cook than I am,” she said, smiling at him.

Karl shrugged. “It is hard to cook good food in time you have for cooking.”

“Well. My complements to the chef.” Her smile had turned sultry, and she was looking him up and down. “Now, what do you say about dessert?”

“Give me time to put away leftovers, you insatiable woman.”

“Oh, very well.”

Rosemary had tried to convince herself that she was coming back to the apartment complex early that day so that she could catch up on her reading, but if she told herself the truth, it was really because she’d wondered why Dr. Kelley hadn’t been in his lab all day. She’d considered calling his apartment to find out, but, well, Saturday hours weren’t technically a requirement of the job, and the man had spent every damn Saturday—and more than a fair share of Sundays, too, at least when he had an infection cycle to observe—in the lab since he’d arrived at Goddard.

She’d been a little surprised to find out that he’d been cooking. Cooking for me, her mind supplied, but she shoved the thought down. No one had ever cooked for her, or at least not since she’d still lived with her parents; there was no call to think that someone had cooked for her now. Clearly he’d just been feeling nostalgic for what was obviously a treasured childhood dish, that was all. It was sheer coincidence that he had decided to share it with her.

Karl turned to her and she plastered a bright smile on her face. “Well, now that that’s done… Did you provide dessert as well, or am I going to have to… scavenge?” She let her eyes drift up and down the length of his body with that last word, and he exhaled sharply.

“Am afraid you will have to find own dessert,” he said, “but I have idea or two about where to start looking.”

“Is that so?”

“Perhaps you would like to give pillaging a try.”

“Mmm. The things I could do with a captive…” Rosemary dropped her voice into the raspy purr that Karl seemed to like, and he let out another sharp little breath.

“Please, suka.”

She took him to her bed and tied him down, and somewhere along the way the smile on her face became a real one.  
  


December 2nd, 1990

Over coffee that morning, Karl gave into his curiosity and asked Rosemary what she did with her Sundays. “More filing?”

“No, I usually catch up on my reading,” she said. “Well, you’ve seen the morass in the living room. Part of my job is making sure I’m on top of currently published research.” She sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “Then there’s laundry. Dishes, too.” Her eyes darted over to the sink, where Karl had already washed the bowls they’d used last night. “Though that one is… less of a concern lately. Thank you for that, by the way. You don’t have to.”

Karl finished off his own coffee, suddenly a little self-conscious. “Well. You feed me most nights. And we both use your dishes.” He stood, and went over to the sink to rinse his mug out. “I will see you tonight for the rest of the borscht?”

Rosemary eyed the fridge. “Honestly, you’d better take the leftovers with you if you want to eat them tonight, otherwise there might not be anything left.” She looked up at the ceiling with an exasperated expression. “If you’d told me even two days ago that I’d find borscht irresistible…”

Karl’s mouth twitched into a smile at that. “Perhaps it is not the borscht you find irresistible,” he said.

Rosemary opened her mouth as if to respond, then sighed instead, looking him up and down, her expression rueful. “You might be right there,” she muttered, so quietly he wasn’t sure that was what she’d actually said, or just what he wanted her to say.

Rosemary sat at her kitchen table for a long time after Karl had left. No, Dr. Kelley. When he wasn’t in her bed, she should keep that distance between them. It was important to.

Though more and more these days, she found herself hard-pressed to remember why it was so important.

She laughed a little at herself and finished off the dregs of her coffee, which had gone stone-cold. God, she was getting maudlin in her old age. Maudlin and melodramatic. And there certainly wasn’t any time for that sort of nonsense in her life, not when she had five research scientists to hound and a mound of paperwork to keep on top of. Oh, and papers to read. Always papers to read.

Not today, though, at least not right away. Today, Rosemary needed to take the suits she’d worn more than twice out for dry-cleaning. She knew that she could always send them out, get a member of security to take them down to the dry-cleaners for her, but like with so many other things she preferred the personal touch. After all, she’d spent a lot of money on clothing that fit over the years, and she wasn’t going to leave its care and keeping to chance. And Nadia always seemed to enjoy telling Rosemary all about her grandchildren.

“And will you be heading off to Detroit this Christmas, Rosemary?”

Rosemary blinked in surprise and put down the photo of Nadia’s youngest with her three. “Goodness, no. You know how it is up there at Goddard, one day off and then nose back to the grindstone.”

“Huh.” Nadia finished tagging the last of Rosemary’s suits. “Thought you might have been, with you so cheery.”

Rosemary stifled a rush of panic. It had come out years ago that Rosemary had grandchildren of her own and that the familial relationship was almost nonexistent, and Nadia seemed to have made it her life’s work to try and convince Rosemary to heal the breach. Not that Nadia had any idea why things were so fraught, of course.

How to tell a woman who’d married for love, who had a family she adored, that Rosemary couldn’t bear to know the child of the married man who had ruined her life?

Not that Julio knew anything about his real father; as far as he was aware, it was Rick, and Rosemary was a friend of Rick and his partner Jamie who had offered to bear a child for them.

Julio had still tried to reach out to her, had wanted to know his birth mother. He’d sent her invitations, him and Rick both, to his graduations, to his wedding, to the christenings of his daughters. In another couple of years, Rosemary thought she’d probably get an invitation to her eldest granddaughter’s Quinceanera, and wouldn’t that be a hell of a thing to have to turn down.

Rosamaria and Abigaíl. They’d even named the damn girls after her.

Nadia was still looking at her expectantly. “It was a good week in the lab,” Rosemary said, shoving a smile onto her face. “People got things done, thank goodness.”

Nadia looked a little disappointed, but shrugged. “You’ll be back for these next weekend?”

Rosemary smiled properly. “Thanks, Nadia, you’re a doll.”

Karl returned that night with the leftovers. He’d purchased potatoes the day before, and spent the afternoon doing what he would have done yesterday if Rosemary had returned home at her usual late hour, grating them up and seasoning, frying up a plate of little brown potato pancakes to go with their dinner.

Rosemary met this offering with a raised eyebrow and a smile. “A man of many talents, I see. It really is quite unfair, Dr. Kelley.”

“Karl,” he corrected, and her smile broadened.

“Karl, then. You are quite unfairly competent.”

Karl shrugged. “Cooking is not so different from running an experiment.”

“Well, I never did have the patience for lab work,” said Rosemary, her smile turning a little sad.

Karl thought that was probably nonsense, but didn’t correct her. Instead, he dished up the food, and had Rosemary try the borscht cold.

Rosemary still seemed a little melancholy over the meal, and Karl expected her to ask him to leave after it was done.

But instead, when he went to gather up the dishes to wash them, Rosemary put a stilling hand on his arm. “Come to bed with me,” she said, her voice low and quiet. “I’ll get the pot back to you when it’s clean.”

“Very well.”

There was something desperate about Rosemary that night. She didn’t wait to see if her body would cooperate, but instead went straight for the lube. The sex they had was fast and frantic, and for the first time Karl finished before Rosemary.

But when he moved to touch her, to give her a climax of her own, she pushed his hands away.

Instead, she clung tight to him afterwards for a very, very long time.  
  


December 3rd, 1990

“I will bring supper over tonight,” Karl said over their morning coffee.

Rosemary frowned. She really ought to be discouraging him from this habit of eating meals with her; it was much too close to having a real relationship with the man, and that was something she definitely didn’t have time for. “I don’t know…”

“More potato pancakes. Sour cream. Applesauce.”

Well, the potato pancakes had been good. “All right.”

Karl finished his coffee, then went to rinse his mug. “Will see you at check-in today,” he said over the sound of the running water. “Will not be late again.”

Rosemary snorted. “I should hope not. You’ve got a bit of a disaster on your hands with this latest Decima strain, and we really need to figure out where you’re headed next.”

Karl put his mug in the drying rack and turned, sighing as he did so, running an anxious hand over his bald head.“Wish I knew what went wrong.”

Before she’d quite realized what she was doing, Rosemary slid off her chair and crossed the room to him, taking his free hand in her own hands and squeezing it. “Hey. You’ll get there.”

He tilted his head to one side and smiled at her. “Hopefully much faster with your assistance.”

Rosemary blushed and dropped his hand, backing away, returning to her table for her coffee mug. “I just ask questions, you know. It’s something anyone with enough background on your research would be able to do. I bet Aditi and Tomas would be able to, if they weren’t so terrified of you.”

Karl laughed a little at that, and Rosemary frowned at him, confused.

“You bring… multidisciplinary approach,” Karl said, his smile wider. “It fits well with my own experience.”

“Well, you wouldn’t believe some of the weird specialists we’ve had come through here over the years. I’ve had to brush up on quite a few things I might never have touched otherwise, and that isn’t even getting into the sort of stuff Pryce gets up to in her basement…” Rosemary trailed off, blushing again, and hid her face by taking another sip of coffee. Karl had been staring at her with a silly, fond expression on his face, and it had left her heart pounding hard against her ribcage.

Karl didn’t comment on her sudden silence. “I am off to shower. See you this afternoon.”

“Doh vstreycheh.”

He paused and turned to her on his way out of her kitchen, a strange little look on his face. And then he smiled and shook his head and muttered something that Rosemary suspected was “Your Russian is truly terrible,” as he left the room.

Rosemary had been strangely soft this morning, and it left Karl feeling hopeful again. He kept trying to shove the feeling down, of course. He had no doubt that later today, at their start-of-week check-in, she would be back to her corporate bitch self, and she would probably remind him that he ought to hate her when he brought supper over tonight.

But knowing that didn't stop the warm glow that had spread through his chest when she’d taken his hand and reassured him, when she’d said her awkward little goodbye in Russian, and even after he’d gotten dressed for the day, he still had a bit of a bounce in his step.

Before heading to the lab, Karl made a side trip to the campus store, picking up a jar of dubious-looking applesauce and, because he’d noticed Rosemary’s supplies of both running low, both condoms and lube.

The clerk gave him a very peculiar look.

“So,” Rosemary said, looking over Karl’s final report on the latest Decima trial. “The results of this latest batch were… not ideal.”

“Virus seems to have weakened immune system, pulmonary system.” Karl sighed. “But did not cause any mutations, wanted or otherwise.”

“Hm.” Rosemary flipped through the report. “Well. I suppose the thing to do now is get to manufacturing a new batch from an older sample, yes?”

Karl sighed again. “Yes. But…”

“But?”

“I am wondering if I have reached boundary of what I can achieve with resources available here on Earth. We have discussed space mission…”

Rosemary worried her lower lip with her teeth for a moment, and Karl’s ability to concentrate on the subject at hand disappeared. “You’re on the waiting list. More than a few of our scientists have been waiting years for a spot on a space mission to open up, you know, and you’ve only been here for a couple of years. But…”

Her teeth dug into her lower lip again. Karl wanted to throw himself across the desk and kiss her, despite the fact that he’d accepted that she didn’t seem interested in kissing him.

“Better results here on earth will bump you up the list,” Rosemary was saying as she frowned across the desk at him, as her hands fiddled with a pen. “So we need to figure out how to get you better results.”

“Er,” was all Karl was capable of.

“Have you considered non-mammalian test subjects?”

“Non-mammalian?” He echoed, his attention still on her mouth, on the temptation of that red, red lipstick of hers.

“Mm. Insects. Plants.”

Karl wrenched his gaze away from Rosemary’s mouth and did his best to give the subject some real thought. “I suppose Decima could be modified to make that work, yes. But it seems like step backwards, when hope is to make retrovirus work on humans.”

“Progress first. If you can get it to work, or at least make significant progress towards the results you want to see, in something—anything—Carter’s more likely to push you to the head of the queue for outer space.” Rosemary had turned her attention back to the report on her desk, and there her teeth went again, nibbling that full lower lip of hers. “And I think I want to get you to work with Dr. Weiss for a few months on a side project or two. His background is… unconventional, and the projects he gets assigned are unconventional too. It wouldn’t hurt to stretch yourself for a bit, do something completely new.”

“Dr. Weiss is…” Karl frowned, trying to remember, trying to distract himself from Rosemary’s mouth. “Xenobiology?”

“Among other things, yes.” She uncapped the pen she was fiddling with and made a note.

“Do I have clearance for xenobiology?” Karl frowned. Dr. Weiss, as far as Karl knew, worked alone most of the time, and Rosemary was one of the few people Karl had ever seen enter the other man’s lab. Rosemary, Carter, and, just once, Pryce.

“No, but you won’t need it for the projects I’ve got in mind.”

“Very well.”

Rosemary handed the report back. “That’s all for today, I think. Keep cleaning up the side projects you’re behind on, and think some more about the non-mammalian test subjects. I can get you just about anything you’d ever want.”

Karl nodded and stood, holding the report at waist height as he did so, feeling rather self-conscious about just how very… distracted he’d gotten while staring at Rosemary’s mouth. And then, as quickly as he could in his current state, he fled her office and made his way up the stairs to the seclusion of his lab.

Rosemary stared at the door to her office, grateful that Dr. Kelley had shut it after him. She feeling just a little flustered, and suspected she’d need a minute or five to collect herself before getting back to work.

It was the way he’d been staring at her, like he couldn’t keep his eyes off her, like he wanted to devour her.

He had no call to be staring at her like that in a work meeting, she found herself thinking. But you enjoyed it, said a little voice from somewhere beyond the logical part of her mind.

And god help her, she actually had enjoyed it.

Karl left his lab early in order to cook. Not that there was anything pressing; most of the side projects he was working on right now involved a lot of, as Rosemary had put it once, hurry up and waiting, short spurts of frantic action followed by hours where nothing much happened.

He hadn’t heard Rosemary’s keys in her door, but as he was finishing off the few last potato pancakes, he heard the sound of the faucet in her bathroom running. He slid the small box of condoms and the lube into his pockets, then loaded his arms up with the sour cream and the applesauce and a plate stacked high with potato pancakes.

“Come in!” Rosemary called when he knocked.

Karl fumbled awkwardly with the knob of the door and managed to get it open without dumping anything on the floor. Down the entry hall, he could see that Rosemary was curled up on the couch, wearing her robe, pen in hand and an abysmal pair of orange reading glasses perched on her nose as she read a paper.

She glanced up and threw the paper aside immediately, crossing to take the plate out of his hands. “Sorry! I’m a little behind on my reading.”

“It is all right.” Karl turned and locked her front door behind him. Rosemary had already gone into the kitchen by the time he turned around, and was separating some of the pancakes onto a second plate. “You can read while we eat, if you would like.”

Rosemary gave him a rueful look. “I’m not sure I can manage it without getting sour cream everywhere.”

“I could feed you.”

Rosemary’s eyebrows quirked up in amusement. “Could you, now. I didn’t think you were that sort.”

“What…?”

“Really?”

“Do… do people do that? For sexual gratification?”

Rosemary seemed to be hiding a smirk. “Oh, you innocent boy.”

Karl blushed. “Well, it would not be for that reason.”

“You wouldn’t be the first sexual partner who has wanted that from me, you know.” Rosemary’s face was now a picture of impish amusement.

“I did not need to know that,” Karl said stiffly.

“In that case, it will probably be safer if I just feed myself,” Rosemary said, barely suppressed laughter in her voice. She finished separating out her own plate of potato pancakes and held up two spoons. “You’re still holding the sour cream and applesauce.”

“Right,” muttered Karl, setting the containers down on her tabletop. They scooped out sour cream and applesauce and started eating in silence.

“These are delicious, by the way,” Rosemary said a few minutes later, as she loaded sour cream and applesauce onto one of the pancakes. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” Karl said, and this small social courtesy seemed to break through the awkward silence of those first few minutes of the meal. “I enjoy cooking, when I can find time for it. It is not always the most efficient means of feeding myself, though. I did not often indulge when I still lived in Russia.” He paused and scooped a few loose slivers of potato up.

“Efficiency is overrated.”

“Your role is to make me more efficient, is it not?”

Rosemary shifted awkwardly. “Only in the lab.”

“Social interactions are not part of lab work,” Karl insisted, staring her down.

She met his eye and frowned. “Social interactions are an intrinsic part of lab work. If you can’t work well with others, if you can’t communicate, you’re not going to contribute to the overall efficiency of the lab, no matter how efficient you are on your own time.”

“I suppose so.” Karl studied her carefully, and she seemed to be studying him back. “Do you want me to leave after dinner, suka?”

There it was, that little gesture that indicated Rosemary was thinking, her teeth sinking into her lower lip. She released her lip and flicked her tongue across it, and Karl almost groaned.

“I don’t know,” she said finally.

“Let me stay,” he murmured.

Rosemary stared at him for a long, quiet moment. And then, she nodded.

By now, Rosemary had stopped thinking of it in terms of a bad habit and had started to think of it as an addiction.

A strange, terrifying addiction that had hooked into her somewhere close to the heart she’d spent the past thirty-five years denying the existence of.

She could still give him up, she told herself. It wasn’t even as if she’d had him for very long. It wasn’t even as if he was hers to have.

She was just… borrowing him for a bit, she told herself. Borrowing him from his total absorption in his research, borrowing him from the gender of lover he’d always preferred in the past. And in a little while, the loan would come due, and she’d return him.

But it was hard to think about returning him when he had taken her to bed after dinner and had driven her wild, bit by bit. It was hard to think about returning him when he was asleep by her side, snoring gently, when somehow over the past few nights, instead of retreating to opposite sides of the bed as they slept, they curled up together in the center of the bed together, limbs entangled.

It was hard to think about returning him when she could feel his breath warm against her neck, when she could smell him on her skin and her sheets, when she couldn’t quite remain unaffected any more when they met face-to-face during work hours.

He’d never be able to tell, she assured herself. She was good enough to make sure of that. 

But she could tell, and that terrified her.

December 4th, 1990

Morning coffee together had almost become a routine now, the two of them sitting on either side of the small round table in Rosemary’s apartment, studiously ignoring one another as they mentally prepared for the day.

Still, Karl couldn’t help but ask, as he rinsed his coffee mug out. “I will see you tonight?”

Rosemary opened her mouth, and for a moment he thought she was going to refuse him. “With more potato pancakes?”

He shook his head. “No more potatoes.”

“I’ll… I’ll get something from the cafeteria for us to eat,” Rosemary said, almost grudgingly, as if the words were being pulled out of her by force.

“Tonight, then.”

“Dr. Kelley?”

He turned in the door to her kitchen and looked at her quizzically.

“I sent a memo to Carter yesterday. About Decima.”

Karl frowned. “That is your job, is it not?”

“I could have put it off. Waited until you had the next steps waiting.” Rosemary took a sip of her coffee, looking down at the tabletop. “He may want to call you in. For a personal meeting.”

“Thank you for the warning.”

She shot him a sharp look. “It wasn’t meant to warn you about Carter.”

“No, you were hoping it would warn me off you, weren’t you?”

Rosemary bit her lower lip and looked back down at the table. “Maybe a little. You can’t trust me to have your best interests at heart, you know.”

“I know, suka.” He made as if to go, then turned back around and came back to Rosemary’s side, bending down to kiss her cheek. “I know,” he said again, in a low whisper against her ear.

“Remember that,” she said back, in a low, breathy voice.

“I will.”

That night, when he returned to Rosemary’s apartment, she called out for him to let himself in again. “Dinner’s in the fridge,” she said. She was on the couch in the living room again, her nose buried in a paper.

Karl reheated the meal in the microwave then went and sat next to her on the couch, peering over her shoulder as he ate. She was scribbling a rather large number of virulent comments on the paper she was reading, most of which he found himself agreeing with—if perhaps not in such harsh terms—when she finished reading the paper and handed it to him before picking up a new one.

“What do you think?”

“You would make vicious peer reviewer.”

Rosemary looked nonplussed. “I don’t know about vicious… Anyway, not about the commentary, about the subject matter.”

“Let me finish reading.” Karl set his plate with the remains of his meal aside and settled in to read through the paper properly. “Viral progression in bacteria.”

“Mm. Of interest?”

“Perhaps. Could certainly do a better job than…” Karl flipped back to the front page. “Dr. Calavicci, et al.”

“I’ll hand that off to you, then.”

“Thank you.” Karl set the paper aside and went to wash his plate, along with Rosemary’s and the coffee cups from that morning. And then, he made a brief detour to her bedroom before returning to the couch. “I am going to distract you now,” he murmured as he leaned in close, nuzzling her neck.

“Are you?” Rosemary’s attention was still on the paper, but she tilted her head to one side to allow him better access to her neck, and he took it as an invitation to nibble softly at her.

“Oh, yes,” he growled against her shoulder, before continuing to nibble and kiss his way downwards.

Rosemary’s breath caught in her throat. “That feels nice,” she said, her voice low and caressing. She let the paper fall into her lap and reached up to run soft fingers along the curve of his ear.

Karl returned to her neck and buried his face there, pressing a warm kiss to the tender area just below her ear. “You smell nice.”

Rosemary nuzzled against his cheek. “So do you.”

The moment was sweet and tender… and couldn’t last. He heard the little rustle of Rosemary removing the paper from her lap, felt her remove her reading glasses, and then her hands were on him, sliding up under his shirt. A few minutes later, they were skin to skin and frantic for one another, and Karl did what he’d wanted to that first night and laid Rosemary down on the couch, rolling on the condom he’d taken out of her bedside table before taking her hard.

She clung to him afterwards, panting, her breath warm against his neck, and he tried to accept that this was all there was between them.

December 5th and 6th, 1990

The next two nights continued in the pattern they’d set, dinner and sex and sleeping tangled together in the same bed, waking early for coffee and drinking it silently in Rosemary’s kitchen as they prepared for the day. They kept to a cautious distance when they met in the lab complex, smiling and nodding as they passed in corridors, keeping carefully to the topic of his work when it was time for her to review it.

Karl wished, sometimes, that the smiles she gave him while they were at work were real ones, but they never quite reached her eyes.

He wondered, sometimes, whether the smiles she gave him when the two of them were locked up tight in her apartment were real either.

December 7th, 1990

Rosemary had given up trying to find justifications or excuses for her behavior. Truth was, she never should have given in to the temptation to sleep with Dr. Kelley the first time, let alone… well, however many nights they’d spent together now.

But it was still so good between them, even if there was a touch of desperation to the entire thing. So good, so sweet, so right.

Rosemary hadn’t had goodness or sweetness for a long, long time, and there was something slightly addictive about it now.

Al had done his best. Al always did. But, well, she wasn’t the only one Al played with, and while he had a certain intent focus about him when he was having sex, that’s all it ever was. Sex.

But with Dr. Kelley—Karl, Dmitri—there was something more.

She didn’t have time for something more. She really didn’t. And a woman like her didn’t deserve goodness or sweetness in any case.

But for just a little longer, she was going to cling to it with everything she had.

“Happy birthday to me,” Rosemary said in a sing-song voice when she opened the door to Karl that night.

“It is your birthday?” Karl asked, a small smile on his lips. “Why did you not tell me this morning? I could have brought you a present.”

“Why are you assuming you haven’t?” she shot back, a wide, amused grin on her face. “I’ll even be good and wait until after dinner to unwrap it.”

His breath went shallow and harsh at the implied meaning, and he looked her up and down, gaze searing into her. “And do I get to unwrap something as well?” he asked.

“Patience, my dear doctor,” she said, still grinning. “There’s plenty of time for all the unwrapping both of us want to do.”

“How old are you now?” Karl asked over the dinner table.

Rosemary raised a disapproving eyebrow. “Now, Dr. Kelley, don’t you know that you should never ask a lady her age?”

“And you would consider yourself a lady?” he shot back.

Rosemary laughed at that. “Well, no, I’m about as unladylike as they come, aren’t I?”

Karl couldn’t help but look her over fondly, perched on the tall chair at her kitchen table, wrapped in a red robe that had clearly seen better days, every sign of the corporate Rosemary stripped from her face, even that red lipstick he found himself strangely fond of. “You… have a certain dignity to you.”

Rosemary snorted with laughter. “Hah! Dignified I am not, Dr. Kelley. And you know it.”

“Wish you would call me Karl,” was the only response he could think of.

Rosemary ducked her head, a little awkwardly. “It’s easier to call you Dr. Kelley. At least when I’m not… when we’re not…”

Karl watched in fascination as her cheeks darkened in a blush. It surprised him, sometimes, that a woman who could outright say she wanted to fuck him to his face could also be so strangely… missish, that was the word. Sometimes she was strangely missish about sex.

She cleared her throat. “In any case… what were we talking about?”

“How old you are.”

“I’m fifty-five, and you know it,” Rosemary said with a smile.

Karl looked at her face and shook his head. “I still believe you must be lying about that. You cannot be a day over forty-seven.”

“My dear doctor—” Karl felt his own cheeks flush a bit; he always did blush when she used endearments for him, even if he knew she didn’t mean a word “—I know you don’t have much experience with women, but most women lie to make themselves younger, not older.”

Karl set his fork aside and slid off his chair, crossing around behind Rosemary and wrapping his arms around her shoulders. He pressed a kiss behind her ear and murmured, “Well, then, perhaps I am simply interested in older women.”

“That much is clear,” Rosemary murmured back, setting her own fork aside. “Unwrap me, Karl dear.”

He did.

December 8th, 1990

It was a Saturday, and even though Karl knew he needed to concentrate on work, knew he couldn’t take another Saturday off without getting a talk about keeping up productivity statistics in a week or two, his thoughts kept drifting towards Rosemary. Rosemary, as she’d been last night, warm and breathless and laughing in his arms.

Rosemary, as she’d been that morning, still cuddled up against his chest when he’d woken up.

Rosemary, telling him that he was her birthday present this year.

Karl wanted it to all be real. Wanted to have some sign that this was no longer just playing for her, wanted some sign that she…

But no. He could not hope for that. He would go mad, hoping for that.

A little tendril of hope had worked its way into his heart, all the same.

Rosemary brought out her strap-on when they moved to the bedroom that night, pulling it out of the bottom drawer of her dresser and dangling it off one finger.

“I’ve never used it with a man before,” she said with a coy smile. “Al’s always been the dominant sort, and the other men I’ve been with didn’t tend to swing both ways. But you seem like you might be the type to enjoy being on the receiving end.”

Karl’s breath stopped in his throat, and he could not get the both of them undressed fast enough.

She took him from behind, hard and fast, one hand snaking around his hips to wrap around his condom-encased cock, and when she was finished he was too wrung-out to do much more than collapse to the bed, leaving the cleanup to Rosemary. After she was done wiping him down, she snuggled up to his side and nuzzled his ear, saying “Next time I’ll have to make sure you take care of me first.”

He laughed weakly at that and threw a limp arm over her, pulling her even closer and murmuring “You will be the death of me, woman,” against the short fuzz of her hair.

Rosemary gave a rich chuckle at that and kissed his neck, murmuring back “Ah, but what a way to go.”  
  


December 9th, 1990

Rosemary looked down at where Karl was asleep on the bed and sighed. She’d meant to kick him out tonight, but as usual, he’d gone to the bathroom to clean himself up before she did, and by the time she was done in the bathroom he was already asleep, curled up in the bed. Really asleep, and not just faking it.

And he had been so tired that he’d collapsed in her bed naked, apparently. His boxers were still on the stack of clothing she’d folded up for him while he’d been using the bathroom.

Rosemary looked down at herself. She hadn’t bothered grabbing her usual nighttime gear before heading to the bathroom, and right now, the thought of being skin to skin with Karl was tempting. So she slid into the bed, cuddling up against his side, inhaling the scent of him, enjoying the feeling of his skin smooth and warm against her own. She stroked a hand down his side and he murmured something incoherent, then rolled towards her, his arm coming around her and pulling her close.

She nuzzled his chest gently and threw her leg over his hips, fitting her body to his, and he pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Tomorrow is Monday. You should sleep,” he whispered.

“I know,” Rosemary said, pressing a soft kiss to his collarbone. “But this feels nice right now.”

Karl hummed a soft agreement and stroked his hand down her side, all the way down her leg, pulling her knee even further over his hips. “I wish I were younger.” He thrust his hips against hers, and she felt his cock, half-hard still from their earlier activities. “Could repeat what we just did.”

Rosemary let out a little laugh at that, and pulled her head back to smile up at him. “Can’t you just enjoy cuddling for a bit?”

Karl gave her a dubious look. “When the body that I am cuddling with looks like yours?”

“I like your body too, but I’m not so overwhelmed by thoughts of sex that it’s the only thing I can think of when I’m cuddled up against you.”

Karl raised one of his nonexistent eyebrows at her. “If I were hard, would you be able to say the same thing?”

Rosemary bit her lower lip and looked down. “Well… I suppose not.” She trailed a finger down his chest, found a nipple and circled it. Karl whimpered and bucked against her.

“Mercy,” he said in a low, harsh voice. “I cannot rise to the occasion just yet.”

“You’re the one who started talking sex,” Rosemary shot back, her expression coy.

“I have learned my lesson,” Karl growled, pulling her close against him, taking her arm in his hand and tucking it around his body, then trapping it under his own. He lifted his head and nipped her neck, then she felt the soft touch of his tongue against her skin, soothing the spot he’d nipped at. “Why do you smell so good?”

“Pheromones, I imagine.”

“Hmm. And lavender soap.”

“How can you tell?”

“You purchased the same soap for me, when I first arrived here.”

“Did you like it?”

“It was not what I was used to, but I missed the scent when it ran out.” He nuzzled her neck, and pressed a kiss there, then nibbled her again, this time gently. “I could spend an eternity exploring your skin.”

Rosemary was amused. “Could you, now.”

“I have wanted to lick every single one of your stretch marks since I first saw you naked.”

Well. That was surprising. And surprisingly appealing. “Is that so?”

“You are surprised?”

“Well, most people who sleep with me don’t seem to mind the fat, but I think you’re the first person who has wanted to, ah, examine the results of the fat in such detail.”

“You are worth examining in every detail.”

Rosemary didn’t know how to respond to that, so instead, she just tucked her head in close, under his chin, and fell asleep in his arms.  
  


December 10th, 1990

That morning, Karl was exhausted, even after a second cup of coffee over Rosemary’s kitchen table. Halfway through the day, when he met Rosemary for his start-of-week check-in, he could see she was exhausted too. Their conversation about the work ahead for him this week was perfunctory, swift—what else could it be, when he was still sorting through the data from the last Decima trial, when his other projects just needed time right now?—but when that was done… He’d expected her to dismiss him immediately, but instead she’d smiled across her desk at him in a tired fashion and said “Look, I think I’m going to bring in a pizza tonight and make an early night of it. Do you…” She swallowed, and he stared, because while their meetings in the lab complex, whether planned or incidental, had been going on just a little bit longer, had had her lingering in his presence, not once had she mentioned what they were doing outside of work.

“Would… would you like to eat dinner together?” he offered up when she couldn’t seem to find the words. She nodded, and he offered a hesitant smile. “I will see you tonight, then,” he said, and stood, nodding awkwardly in her direction before leaving her office for his lab.

The pizza she provided that night was garlicky and salty, covered in anchovies and assorted vegetables and not at all the type of thing he’d expected her to enjoy. But they’d enjoyed it together, and afterwards…

Afterwards they still somehow ended up in her bed together, no pretense of sex, just the two of them tangled together in each other’s arms, each taking comfort from the sheer physical presence of the other as they drifted off to sleep.


	20. 25 Nights Part 4: Let’s be honest, one of them should have thrown their back out by now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smuuuuuut 
> 
> and also two human disasters falling in love
> 
> and freaking out about it
> 
> also some more bondage

December 11th, 1990

Rosemary woke up early, suddenly terrified of what she’d done the evening before.

She hadn’t meant to bring any mention at all of their recreational activities up at work. She had never been the sort to do so in the past. Hell, she’d always ended things immediately with past lovers who tried to do it to her.

The truth was, she’d been thinking only about how exhausted she was, how her body had finally worn through the initial rush of lust that always came with a new sexual partner, how it was time to take a step back and see him less often. She’d been thinking about how best to turn him down when he came to her door that night, not wanting to do it in a way that would discourage him entirely. She was still enjoying the sex, after all, and he’d proven himself capable of keeping the right amount of distance at work.

And then he’d entered her office for his start-of-week meeting with her, looking as wan and drawn as she felt herself, and she felt such a surge of… of fondness, such a rush of panic at the thought that maybe he was tired enough that she wouldn’t get the chance to turn him away at her door, that maybe he wouldn’t knock at all…

Well. It was weakness. Suddenly, she’d been weak, and had done what she needed to in order to make sure he would knock, to make sure he’d be in her apartment that night.

And, after dinner, when he’d looked at her heavy-eyed, tired, longing, it was weakness that lead her to guide him to the bedroom. Weakness that lead her to ignore him stripping down to his boxers and climbing into her bed as she changed into her own nighttime wear.

Weakness that lead to her snuggling up against his already-snoring form, weakness that lead to her letting out a sigh of relief as he woke just enough to wrap an arm around her and pull her closer, nuzzling her sleepily before lapsing back into gentle snores.

Now, in the morning, he shifted next to her, his morning wood poking her in the hip, and despite the fact that she was still tired, she would not have said no if he’d suggested doing something about it.

But he didn’t. Instead, he lifted his head, peering near-sightedly over her at the red glow of her alarm clock, and let out a satisfied grunt. “Good,” he said. “We can take time over coffee this morning.” He kissed her forehead absentmindedly, then extracted himself from the bed, stumbling around it to scoop up his glasses from the bedside table.

Rosemary shifted, preparing to get out of bed herself, but he waved a hand at her from the door to her bedroom. “Sleep a bit more, Rosie. I will start coffee.”

And then he was gone, off to her kitchen she supposed, leaving her behind in bed to digest the shock of him using Al’s pet name for her.

God help her, she liked it.

Something had changed, Karl reflected that afternoon. He’d passed Rosemary in the entrance hall of the lab complex after lunch, and not only had she smiled at him, a real smile that went all the way to her eyes, she’d stopped to ask him how his day was going. And talking had turned into flirting, not the sarcastic quips she normally used, but something warm that left him feeling fluttery inside. He’d even made a joke, he didn’t even remember what it was now or if it was any good, but it had made her laugh regardless. Even the fact that Doctor Pryce had passed by just then, giving them a cold look with those strange mechanical eyes of hers that silenced Rosemary immediately, had not dulled the glow that Rosemary’s laughter left him with.

That night was almost a repeat of the previous, with frozen meals heated in Rosemary’s microwave taking the place of the pizza they’d eaten the night before. Somehow, food that had been just barely tolerable when eaten alone became, if not delicious, at least adequately edible in Rosemary’s presence.

And somehow, the act of simply sleeping in Rosemary’s bed with her, with no intention or even expectation of sex involved, was more intimate than every single one of the nights they’d spent fucking each other senseless.

December 12th, 1990

Very early that morning, the phone in Rosemary’s apartment rang, and she got up to answer it, patting Karl on the shoulder and telling him to stay in bed. He muttered and rolled over, but couldn’t quite drift off, listening with half an ear to the quiet responses Rosemary was making to whoever it was on the phone in the other room.

She came back into her bedroom after a few moments and started pulling things out of drawers, went into her closet for a fresh suit. Karl sat up a bit in bed and she went over to him, pressing him back down, saying “Sleep,” in a calming voice. He sighed and subsided, dozing off again, only to be woken by Rosemary’s light kiss to his cheek and the jangle of keys on the bedside table. “Here. Lock up when you leave, all right? And just bring them by my office later.”

Rosemary tried to straighten up, but he sat up, grabbing her wrist and then her arm and pulling her back down towards him so that he could kiss her cheek, kiss the sliver of neck left exposed above her ascot. She laughed a bit, and pressed a kiss to his forehead in return. “Naughty man. I’ve already taken too long to get ready, and Doctor Pryce isn’t a patient woman.”

Karl grunted, and wrapped his arms around her, resting his cheek against her chest. “She should not be allowed to wake you in middle of night like this,” he said.

“Yes, well, it’s my job,” said Rosemary airily, stroking her hand down the back of his head and neck, letting it linger on his bare shoulder. “Now you really must let go.”

Karl sighed, but released her, watching her walk out of the bedroom, listening as she unlocked the front door and left.

He didn’t think he’d be able to get back to sleep again. Not without her in the bed. So instead, he turned on her bedside lamp, dressed, took the keys and left Rosemary’s apartment for his own.

Back in his own apartment, he looked at the time and sighed. It was truly far too early to be up and about, especially without coffee. He went to his bedroom, opened the door, looked at the bed… had it gathered a fine coating of dust, some time over the past few weeks? He thought perhaps it had. He lifted the blanket off the top and shook it experimentally, and while there wasn’t exactly a cloud of dust in the air after… well.

Perhaps he should spend his spare time laundering the sheets, he thought. Clean everything up now, so that when he finally came to his senses, when this whatever it was with Rosemary ended, he wouldn’t be facing musty bedclothes.

She hadn’t reminded him to hate her for a day or two, he realized. Perhaps she had given up on reminding him of that.

Perhaps this would last.

…perhaps it was best to launder his sheets, just in case.

Karl left the apartment building at his usual time, heading towards the cafeteria to find some kind of breakfast. And coffee; he hadn’t bothered making a pot of his own. It hadn’t really seemed worth it, not without Rosemary to share it with.

Will she be in her office this morning? he wondered. Before he could have second thoughts, he gathered up a second to-go cup of coffee, added a second pastry to his own, paid for it all, and headed towards the lab complex.

When he knocked on her half-open door and nudged it further open with his foot, she turned a tired-looking face up at him from behind her desk, only for her entire face to light up with delight at the sight of him.

Or perhaps it was just the sight of the coffee. Her ecstatic “Oh, blessed coffee,” made him smile, and he handed one of the cups over. She took a sip and shut her eyes, a blissful expression on her face.

“Has your assistant not been taking care of you?”

Rosemary sighed and settle back in her desk chair, cuddling the to-go cup close to her chest. “Charles has the week off. Visiting family for the holidays. Apparently they always do an early Christmas because of his father’s job.”

She seemed to be in a chatty mood, so Karl closed the door behind him and settled down in one of the guest chairs, offering her the paper bag with the pastries in it. “Will you be taking a week off for family events?”

Rosemary gave him a confused look, and covered her confusion by sipping her coffee.

“Your child,” he prompted.

“No,” she said, firmly. “There’s no relationship there at all.”

“I see.” Karl sipped his own coffee, expecting her to expel him from her office at any moment, but lingering with her for as long as she’d let him. “What did Pryce want?”

Rosemary seemed excessively grateful for the change of topic, and laughed a little. “Oh, she just had one of her late-at-night brainstorms and needed someone to pull equipment out of storage, make sure she was fully stocked with all the supplies she needed, that sort of thing.”

“This happens often?”

Rosemary nodded, taking a sip of her coffee and finally exploring the contents of the paper bag, pulling out one of the pastries. “Oooh, a bear claw.”

“So you are expected to, what, be on call to cater to Pryce’s whims at any time of the day or night?” Karl dug the other pastry out, eying it, wondering how an innocuous almond-paste-filled pastry had wound up being called a bear claw. He supposed it bore a passing resemblance to a bear’s paw. A very passing one.

Rosemary took a bite of her own pastry before answering, washing it down with a swig of her coffee. “Well, yes.” At his frown, she shrugged. “It’s the job, Doctor Kelley. If you were over here late at night and needed something, I’d be on call for you too.”

“I would wait until morning,” said Karl, his frown deepening.

Rosemary smiled at that. “Well, that is very considerate of you,” she said in a cheerful tone, “but I really am used to it, you know. It’s honestly shocking it hasn’t happened until now.”

“Do the others call on you so late at night?”

“Of course.” Rosemary took another bite of her pastry and turned her chair towards her computer, opening up her email and calendar. “Hm. You’ll be winding up a few of your side projects soon, right? And Decima’s still going to be in a rest phase for a bit, and you’ve already got that viral progression in bacteria thing under way.”

“Mmm,” said Karl, through a sip of his coffee. He’d produced a research proposal for the last project during their meeting on Monday.

Rosemary set her pastry down and bent over to dig into one of the drawers of her desk, pulling a stack of papers out and setting them in front of Karl. “Here. Might as well pick up another side project or two, just to keep you busy until I can get you working with Weiss in the new year. Take a look at these.”

Karl pulled the papers closer and opened the first one, flipping through it with a small smile on his face. “This is your work.”

Rosemary had turned back to her computer, but she glanced back his way, a shy smile on her own face. “Yes. How did you know?”

“You have a very distinctive style,” he said. “I can tell this was based on a study that made you angry.”

Rosemary chuckled at that, in what he thought was genuine amusement. “I suppose it did.”

“I wish I had known sooner, that these came from you.”

“Oh?” said Rosemary, distracted, typing an email. “Why’s that?”

“Because I could have used a more experienced hand with some of them than either of my lab techs can provide.”

Rosemary had turned to him as he said this, and was frowning at him. “What makes you think I’d have anything to contribute?”

“Rosemary.” Karl raised his eyebrows, giving her a significant look.

Rosemary seemed a bit flustered, turning back to her computer, her shoulders suddenly tense. “I just put the proposals together. You lot do the actual work.”

“And you could not?” Karl asked, gently.

Rosemary’s jaw tensed as well, and she glared at her computer screen. “Of course not.”

“Rosemary, you might be able to lie to yourself, but you cannot lie to me.”

“I have work to do, Karl,” she said, her voice quiet and fierce. “Please leave me to it.”

Karl sighed and stood, tucking the pile of proposals under his arm before scooping up the remains of his pastry and his mostly-empty coffee cup. “Very well. I will let you know which of these projects I wish to take on.”

Rosemary ignored him, shoving her reading glasses on to her face, her eyes strangely bright, and Karl sighed again, then turned and left, carefully closing her office door again behind him.

He saw her again later that day, a brief businesslike meeting where he passed back the proposals he wasn’t interested in and she started the process of getting him assigned to the ones he’d chosen. And then he was expelled from her office, her manner cold and distant.

Rosemary set her glasses aside as Karl left the office and grabbed a tissue from the box on her desk, dabbing carefully at her eyes for the second time that day. Damn the man, making her cry just by being there. Well, she just wouldn’t let him in her apartment that night, that was all. Let him see what happened when he pushed too far.

She waited a long moment to make sure there were no more tears, then perched the glasses on her nose again and turned back to the computer screen. She still had almost two weeks until the end-of-quarter reports for the lab were due to Mr. Carter, but it wouldn’t hurt to get started on them now, especially now when things were a little slow for most of her researchers. She’d most likely need to have a little talk to Dr. Gao later, of course; Carter had worked his meeting with her in for today, and Rosemary was prepared for the possibility of hysterics.

And hysterics there were.

“That man does not understand scientific research, Rosemary!” Dr. Gao was pacing Rosemary’s office, in a fury.

“Just because he’s management doesn’t mean he’s got no clue what he’s doing, Gao,” Rosemary said, keeping her tone even and measured. “And that’s not what the meeting was about, and you know it.”

Dr. Gao came to a standstill, quivering with anger. “Some of the projects I was given cannot be completed on the time scale that was assigned to them.”

“And that’s all well and good, and we make allowances for that, but you haven’t been completing the ones that can be, have you?”

Dr. Gao fell into one of Rosemary’s guest chairs and slumped, her anger leaving her as quickly as air from a deflating balloon. “No.”

“What’s happening, Edwina?” Rosemary usually did not use the first names of the scientists she managed, but every once in a while it was a useful tool.

“I do not know.” The botanist sighed. “I think… I think I have spent too long in this place, Rosemary.”

Rosemary frowned. Dr. Gao had been an academic before she’d joined Goddard, had worked at a big research institution… but she’d been looking to go into the private sector when Goddard had recruited her. Rosemary remembered her arriving, a bit more than ten years ago, with a bounce in her step and a great deal of glee in her demeanor, happy that, for the first time since she’d gotten her undergraduate degree, she wouldn’t be teaching. But perhaps… “Do you miss teaching?”

Dr. Gao sighed again. “Do you know what, I think I do?” She let out a harsh little laugh at that. “Not undergraduates, of course, but I miss having graduate students dearly.”

Rosemary chewed the inside of her lower lip, considering. “There might be something we can do about that, you know. Step back the research side of things, get you out to a local university for a semester or two.”

Another harsh laugh from Gao. “But I cannot leave this place, can I?”

“You have the right to end your employment here at any time.”

“But not if I ever want to do what I love again. Not if I ever want to…” Gao’s gaze drifted upwards, to where her lab was, to where the plants that were as dear to her as children lived. Her voice was distant now, and a little sad. “God, Rosemary, what was I thinking when I signed that damn contract?”

“It was logical. Your ideas were too radical for academia. You needed funding from the private sector. So you did what you had to do, with the only company that saw the promise of what you were offering.” Rosemary tried to keep her voice even, but all the same… well. Gao was asking a question Rosemary had started to ask herself, these past few weeks, a question Rosemary hadn’t even realized she had been asking herself.

Fifteen minutes later, Edwina had been soothed, and Rosemary went back to working on her end-of-quarter reports. But that question was still lingering in the back of Rosemary’s mind.

What had she been thinking, when she’d signed her life away to Goddard Futuristics?

That night, Karl left the labs late, and despite the fact that the light in her apartment was still on, he did not expect her to answer the door. But when he knocked she called out “Enter!” and he tried the knob to find it unlocked. She met him just inside the door, already in her red robe, stripped of wig and makeup and every other sign of her corporate armor, and she wrapped her arms around him and started pressing kisses to his throat.

“Rosemary?”

“Hush.” She pressed her finger to his lips. “I can think of better things for you to do with your mouth than talk.”

Karl sighed, and lowered his head against her shoulder, turning and nipping her neck. “So it is to be all play with you tonight, suka?”

She pulled back and looked up at him, solemn, and nodded.

“Very well.” Karl followed her to the bedroom and let her tie him to the bed, let her gag him, let her play with him how she wanted. And it felt good, so very good, but he found he was detached, found himself wondering and worrying about Rosemary.

Found himself wishing he knew why she ran so very far away from the idea that her mind, her skills, might be the equal of his own. Should be the equal of his own.

Afterwards, Rosemary curled up in bed with her back to him, though she did not protest when he curled up behind her, wrapping an arm around her, fitting his body to hers, nuzzling her hair.  
  


December 13th, 1990

Rosemary woke up, feeling relaxed and sated for a few short minutes before her brain reminded her why, exactly, she was feeling the way she was. The warm, comforting figure of Karl tucked up close against her back was another reminder, a reminder of how he’d seemed to be detached the night before, a reminder of how he’d looked at her…

Rosemary was worried, suddenly, that sex would not be enough of a distraction, that he would keep pushing, keep trying to get closer. She worried, too, that she might let him.

He’d seen so many things, so much of the worst that humanity had to offer. Her past would not be shocking to him, she knew. But knowing her past might make him think she had a future to offer him, a future she wanted to offer him, if only, if only…

If only she hadn’t been Goddard’s hound, Pryce’s loyal dog, Carter’s goddamn bitch on a leash for so long. If only she had a future to give him.

And he would keep pushing, she knew he would, and god help her, she wanted him to, she wanted to believe for a little while that she had a future, with him, a future where the only bit of her past that mattered was the part that made her someone he could talk to like an equal, a peer.

A future where she could admit that somewhere inside her there was still a heart.

Rosemary extracted herself carefully from his arms, from the bed, found her robe. She wasn’t a very good cook, she knew, but scrambled eggs and toast was something she could manage, and she wasn’t sure if he’d eaten dinner last night before coming to her.

When he emerged from the bedroom, wearing nothing but his boxers and blinking hazily at her from behind his glasses, she smiled one of her bright, fake smiles up at him and served him up breakfast and coffee.

They didn’t talk, and the silence between them was a little strained, not the companionable silence that had grown between them the past few weeks. Karl ate quickly, hungrily, and Rosemary scooped half her share of the eggs over to his plate. He accepted them with a grunt of gratitude, and Rosemary found herself smiling at him in spite of herself

She was just so… so fond of the man. That was the problem, in the end. He was broken, and lonely, and fit so goddamn well with her own broken, lonely self, his pieces mixing with her own. It was as if they were piecing together something new out of their broken parts, something still so damn fragile that the slightest stress would shatter it if they weren’t careful.

Rosemary knew that she should shatter it now, while it was still as fragile as a soap bubble, while they both might escape with most of their pieces intact. There was no place for loving someone this way in her life.

But that didn’t stop her from wanting to, and as she watched Karl finish his coffee, as he scooped up their empty plates and mugs and went to wash them quickly at the sink, she knew that she wasn’t strong enough to put an end to this herself.

That night, she left her door unlocked for him, and his knock was cursory. He looked tired, as exhausted as she was. Pryce had kept her on her feet all day, running from one end of the lab complex to the other, and when Pryce was restless, she got the rest of her scientists popping their heads out of their labs to ask for this or that, items they’d been meaning to put in requisition requests for for weeks, but had never quite remembered to.

Karl had been the sole exception; he’d disappeared into his lab, setting up the two experiments he’d chosen and which Rosemary had passed on approval for that morning. He’d either made do with the equipment already in his lab, or sent lab techs off on scavenger hunts; either way, she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him all day.

Well, not that he had any hair to see.

She’d missed him a shocking amount, Rosemary realized. As much as his attempt to learn more about her past the day before had rankled, she realized that his presence in her office had almost been soothing.

It was soothing, too, to sit at her small round table, to eat mediocre tv dinners with him that she suspected neither of them were actually enjoying. The silence between them was companionable again, and halfway through the meal he reached across the table, placing his left hand on her right, pulling it further onto the table and just holding it in a somewhat absentminded way. Rosemary wasn’t even sure that he realized he’d done it, and his look of surprise when she turned her hand under his and took hold of him in return, squeezing his hand gently, made her sure of it.

He looked down at their joined hands, his face a little melancholy.

“What’s wrong?” Rosemary asked.

Karl shook his head. “Nothing. This is…” He sighed, and squeezed her hand. “This feels very…” He shook his head again, and put his fork down, his meal only half-finished. “Let us go to bed, suka. I am simply tired. And feeling very old.”

Rosemary laughed a little at that. “All right.”

The twenty-second night they spent together was another where all they did was sleep, though Karl pulled Rosemary very close indeed, burying his face against her shoulder, holding her tight throughout the night. For all she was exhausted, it took a long time for her to fall asleep, her body wound tight with a quiet desperation, with the intense hope that this would last, that they would both be strong enough to make it work.

Please, god, let them both be strong enough.  
  


December 14th, 1990

Karl woke early in the morning and lifted his head from Rosemary’s shoulder, looking down at her fondly. She was… well. He did not think that many people would consider her beautiful. Attractive, certainly, but not beautiful, especially not like this, without her wig, her face scraped clean of its usual coat of makeup, revealing the fine network of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, the deep lines that bracketed her mouth. But they were wrinkles that spoke to a lifetime spent smiling, even if those smiles were mostly in the service of dazzling people into following her commands.

She was not beautiful. But he loved her all the same. He was not sure how or at what point over the past three weeks his interest in her body and his respect for her mind had turned into love, but there he was, loving her.

Perhaps he had always loved her, from the moment he had met her. Perhaps it had just taken him this long to see it.

Rosemary could never know, he realized. He didn’t dare tell her, not unless… not unless she loved him back. Because there was no security to be had with her, no safety. She had trusted him implicitly with her body these past weeks, but her true emotions she held close to her chest, frosting over any time he came too close to them. She held her past close too, an inequity he was feeling strongly at the moment; she had seen his file. She must know everything there was to know about him, and yet he knew only the barest shreds of her past. He only knew that somewhere out there was a child—no, probably a grown man by now—who she no longer knew. He knew that for some reason, every time he tried to kiss her on the lips, she turned away. He knew she had been with Goddard for nearly fifteen years now.

And he knew that she had a brilliant mind, that she should be doing research of her own, and that for some reason she believed it was beyond her.

But everything else about the woman behind the corporate mask she wore so often was still a mystery to him. A mystery he would like to solve, but would she let him?

He did not know. And he felt it again, that sense of urgency, that sense of loss that had been coming back to him again and again during the time he’d spent with her. For now, she was his. For now, she was allowing this. But would it last? Could it last?

He did not know.

Rosemary stirred a bit, then winced, opening her eyes. “Goodness, your head is heavy. My arm is completely asleep.”

Karl laughed a little at that. “Apologies, suka,” he said. He sat the rest of the way up and gathered up her arm, rubbing the feeling back into it a bit at a time. Rosemary smiled fondly up at him as he did, giggling as he found ticklish spots, and oh, oh how he wanted this to last.

He thought he could happily spend the rest of his life like this, with this woman. At 45, he was well into middle age, and for the first time in his life, he understood why someone might wish to get married, might wish to settle down with one person, to have and to hold, for the rest of their lives.

If he had met her sooner, would his life had been different? Or was it the path that he had taken to get here, the path that she had taken to get here, that made them fit together the way they did?

He finished with her arm and lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. She smiled up at him, a lazy, fond smile. “Ridiculous man,” she muttered.

“Would you like to spend Christmas together?” Karl blurted out, before he could think better of it.

Rosemary’s face went blank. “I’m sorry?”

“Christmas. You do not have family to go to, correct? Neither do I. So… so perhaps we could spend it together.” He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles mindlessly.

Rosemary took a deep, unsteady breath. “I… I don’t know if that’s wise.”

“Right. Of course not.” Karl realized he was clinging to Rosemary’s hand, and set it down by her side instead and slid off the bed. “Well. I will go make coffee.”

“Karl…” Rosemary’s voice was plaintive, but he did not look at her as he scooped up his glasses and headed towards the door of the bedroom.

“It is fine, suka. Would you like eggs? Toast?”

He heard Rosemary sigh. “No, just coffee, thank you.”

After the awkwardness of the morning, Rosemary did her best to avoid Karl, but by mid-afternoon, her other scientists were starting to ask why, exactly, she kept dropping in to see what they were working on. She briefly considered going to the basement to see what Pryce was currently working on, but she didn’t quite dare.

Fortunately, Karl seemed just as intent on avoiding her as she was on avoiding him.

That made Rosemary a little bit angry, almost. He was the one who had pushed her, who kept pushing her. And she kept pushing back, kept marking clear boundaries. So it didn’t make sense that she’d be angry that he hadn’t kept pushing this morning, but she was. It was like… like she’d been going up a flight of stairs, and had thought there was one stair more than was actually there, leaving her stepping into thin air that she expected to support her.

So finally, at the end of the day, she went to his lab, swiping her keycard angrily and flinging the door open when it beeped to let her know it was unlocked.

Karl wasn’t there, not in the little office off the main lab, not in the side lab with the old equipment, and that made her angrier. Rosemary was checking behind a tall storage cabinet in the main lab and muttering something to herself about asshole scientists who are cowardly enough to go into hiding when the door to his lab opened behind her. She heard Karl say in a mild voice, “Was there something you needed me for, Rosemary?” and all her anger bled away in an instant.

Rosemary turned, and she looked at him, and heaven help her, her heart skipped a beat.

“I, uh.” Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she swallowed, hard. “I was going to go into town. And get some ingredients. For dinner. But, well, you know how bad a cook I am…”

Karl’s face lit up. “I can write you list.”

When Rosemary returned to her office, there was a memo waiting in the inbox on her door from Carter. She opened it and read it with a frown.

“Moving the quarterly review forward to Monday.”

Rosemary swore softly. But no, she’d made enough progress already, picking away at the end-of-quarter reports in her spare time. It would be a hectic weekend, but she could manage it.

And she wasn’t going to give up on dinner with Karl for anything, so before anything else, she made her way off Goddard’s campus and did the shopping, stowing it all in her apartment before heading back to the lab complex.

Karl paused and looked back up at the lab complex as he left, frowning. The light in Rosemary’s office was still on, when she would normally be back in her apartment by now, so he backtracked to the third floor to check in on her.

She gave him a slightly harried look when he knocked on her half-open door. “Oh, god, what time is it?”

“Eight-thirty.”

She frowned and pulled a ring of keys out of her pocket, then detached one and handed it over. “Here. I did the shopping earlier, but I’ve got probably another…” she examined her computer screen, the frown digging itself deeper on her face. “Ouf. At least another half-hour of printing to get done, but at least once that’s out of the way I can move back to the apartment for the night.”

“Has an emergency come up?”

Rosemary’s mouth twitched up into a sardonic little smile. “Only of the Carter sort. He’s moved the end-of-quarter review up to the start of next week instead of the end. I’ll have to re-schedule all my check-ins for later in the week.”

“I will put supper in the oven,” Karl said. Somehow, he resisted the urge to go around Rosemary’s desk and press a kiss to her cheek before leaving her office. For all that he wanted to, he suspected that she would not appreciate the gesture.

That night, Karl cooked in Rosemary’s kitchen, putting together a version of one of her casseroles that actually tasted like real food. When she finally made her way to her apartment, she put together the salad he’d asked for ingredients for as he cooked, laughing and shaking her head when he tried to rope her into cooking with him. “I’m a dump it all in one pan and bake it sort of girl,” she said, smiling at him.

While the casserole baked, filling the apartment with its savory aroma, Rosemary begged his pardon and decamped to the living room, where she settled down on the couch with a pen and the papers she’d been printing when Karl had come to find her in her office. Karl finished washing the pot and pan he’d used in dinner preparations, and then joined her on the couch, putting his arm around her shoulders and picking up one of the scientific papers off the side tables for a bit of light reading. By the time the timer rang, announcing the readiness of the casserole, Rosemary was snuggled up against his side, her head nestled against his shoulder, one of her legs flung over his lap, and Karl’s heart was so full that it felt like it would burst.

After dinner, they returned to the couch, him to continue reading his way through some of the morass of papers, Rosemary to continue her work on the quarterly review report, until finally she let out a cracking yawn in the middle of a sentence and declared it was time for bed.

“Shall I go, suka?” Karl felt strangely uncertain all of a sudden.

Rosemary set the pile of papers she was holding down and gave him an offended look. “Don’t you dare. I’m counting on you to keep my feet warm.”

Karl let out a relieved sigh and followed her to the bedroom.  
  


December 15th, 1990

The next morning went the same way the previous few had, coffee accompanied by a companionable silence. Rosemary wasn’t quite sure how that was possible to consider the past couple of mornings companionable, given how awkward and stilted their conversation had felt at the time, but in her memory they had gained a rosy glow. Every memory involving Karl Kelley had gained the same rosy glow, all the way back to the first day she’d met him.

Perhaps even all the way back to when she’d first read his file.

Rosemary had guessed that her attraction to Karl would be a problem, back on that first day day. And then she’d seen him naked—accidentally, of course, and her fault for not taking more caution when entering his apartment the next morning—but even if she hadn’t, well, the attraction had already been there, her eye caught by prominent cheekbones, by icy blue eyes.

If she’d known back then that her attraction might lead to this, she would have begged Mr. Carter to move Karl to one of the satellite offices. He wouldn’t have done it, she suspected, but she would have begged all the same.

If she’d known three weeks ago that her attraction might lead to this, she would have had Al kick Karl out of her apartment when he’d offered to, instead of taking Al’s advice and fucking Karl senseless.

The problem was that she suspected she was in love, properly in love, maybe for the first time in her life. She didn’t count that long-ago affair that had done its best to ruin her life as love, not any more. But she’d locked her emotions, her real emotions away so deep, so tight, that she was no longer sure what it meant to feel something real.

Rosemary realized Karl was giving her a strange look, and she cleared her throat, looking down at her coffee. “Sorry. My mind was wandering. Did you say something?”

“Simply that I should go shower now. Viral progression in bacteria is already showing signs of positive outcome. I should check progress,” Karl said, reaching across the table and placing his hand over hers, where it was clenched around the coffee mug.

Rosemary looked back up and gave Karl a small smile, holding back the great burst of warmth she felt at his touch. But something must have shown on her face, because he gave her a startled, wondering look, and opened his mouth as if to add something. After a long, tense moment, he sighed and smiled himself, shaking his head. “I will see you around lab complex?” he asked. “Or… or perhaps for lunch?”

Rosemary bit her lip, and nodded. “I’ll bring you something from the cafeteria? A sandwich?”

“As long as it does not involve turkey and gravy,” Karl said, making a face.

Rosemary laughed at that and lost what little control she had over the warm glow that was filling her. Across the table, Karl looked just a little bit dazed, and then his own face lit up with a brilliant smile.

“Perhaps I could stay here today instead. We could take this Saturday off, surely?” he offered, his voice low and needy.

The glow drained away slowly at that, leaving Rosemary suddenly sad. “No, you should get going. And I’m going to be working flat-out for the next two days to get that quarterly review ready No rest for the wicked, after all.” She paused, and bit her lip, knowing that what she was about to say was a bad idea and planning to say it anyway. “But I will see you for lunch. With a normal sandwich, not an abomination.”

Karl’s face sank as well, and then he nodded. “Of course. I… of course.” He finally pulled his hand back across the table and stood, taking his mug to the sink to rinse and wash it. Rosemary took a desultory sip of her own coffee, watching him, her heart aching because she’d read his feelings all over his face when he’d offered to spend the day with her. She couldn’t tell if it was love, or just fondness on his part, but there was something there, almost as strong as the warmth she felt every time she looked at him.

Rosemary would have to think about that.

Karl returned to her side and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, stooping to press a kiss to her forehead. And then he was gone, and her apartment felt very, very empty without him.

When Rosemary brought Karl his sandwich, he was hunched over a microscope, completely engrossed in his current project. She handed the sandwich off and watched as he ate it one-handed, hardly looking at it, and took her own lunch back to her office once he was done. And if she felt a little disappointed that he’d hardly had attention to spare for her in that moment, well. She couldn’t hold him responsible for her feelings, and she shouldn’t have been lingering anyway, not with the amount of work she had to do.

But when she went back to the apartment building, she left her door unlocked for him. And as much as she tried to tamp the feeling down into nothing, her heart soared when she heard his brief knock, heard him open the front door of her apartment and call out her name.

“In the living room!” she called, and he came down the entry hall, sitting stiffly on the couch and leaning back with a wince. “Spend too much time hunched over a microscope today?” Rosemary asked, pity and amusement warring in her tone.

Karl grunted in response. “Next time, make me stop for lunch and stretch,” he said, grumpy.

“I might be your lab manager, but I’m not your keeper,” Rosemary shot back.

There was a significant silence, and then Karl said quietly, “Perhaps I would like you to be my keeper.” Another moment of silence, where Rosemary hardly dared to breathe, and he added, “Perhaps I would like to keep you.”

Rosemary bit her lip, hard, and looked off at the far corner of her living room. Too close. That was far, far too close to the direction her thoughts had been going, these past few days. “I’ll give you a shoulder rub after dinner,” she said finally, breaking the tension that had started to grow in the silence between them.

Karl sighed, and levered himself back to his feet. “Will go microwave leftovers. You keep working.”

That night, they could not seem to find the words to say what they needed to say to one another. So instead, they conversed through gestures, through little touches, through the quirk of an eyebrow, a mouth that twitched into half a smile. After dinner, Rosemary took Karl to the bedroom, laid him down on the bed, and worked her fingers into his shoulders, pressing and pulling, releasing the tension of his day. And when she was done, and sitting at his side, he rolled over, loose and languid, and pulled her down to him. He kissed her cheek, her ear, her neck, gentle, sweet kisses that left her wishing she had the courage it would take to press her lips to his own, to find out if her love for him was enough to make that a possibility for her once again.

Instead, though, Rosemary nestled her head against Karl’s shoulder and threw a leg over his own, and all too quickly they were both asleep, clinging to one another in the night.

December 16th

Karl woke very early the next morning, still stiff, but strangely elated all the same. Because for all that Rosemary had evaded the subject handily when he’d brought it out in the open the night before, that unguarded laugh, that glowing smile from the previous morning still left him feeling hope, for once. Hope that there was something real, something warm underneath the frost Rosemary kept drawing over her emotions.

She muttered something in her sleep and he pulled her closer, pressing a kiss to her forehead. Her lips pursed and she pressed a lazy kiss to his collarbone in return, obviously still mostly asleep, and Karl couldn’t help but smile.

She shifted against him again, and then her hand started tracing lazy circles against his side, leaving the skin there prickling with awareness. He pressed another kiss to her forehead, and then she opened her eyes and lifted her head even with his, her face a bare inch from his own, her breath brushing his lips. His own breath stopped in his chest, and he waited, hoping, longing. And then she leaned just a little bit closer and let her lips barely brush against the corner of his mouth, before pulling hastily back and looking down at him with an expression oddly close to terror.

It wasn’t a kiss, not really. But he thought it was perhaps the most she could offer, and he found himself strangely touched by the gesture. He put a hand on her shoulder and stroked it cautiously. “It is all right, suka. I do not need that from you.”

“I know,” she said, her voice raspy with sleep. “But I want to give it to you, if I can.”

Karl felt his mouth quirk into another involuntary smile. “I can think of other things for you to do with your mouth,” he growled.

Rosemary smirked. “So can I,” she said.

They whiled away the rest of their Sunday morning in a slow, heated exploration of each other’s bodies, taking their time, until finally they reached a point where taking time no longer became an option. Karl collapsed against Rosemary at the end, nuzzling the side of her head, and she didn’t seem to be in any hurry to push him off, as she’d done in the past. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him and pressed slow, leisurely kisses to his shoulder.

“I should head in to the lab complex,” she said eventually.

Karl sighed. He should do laundry himself. He needed clean pants, and was down to one clean lab coat himself. The half-formed thoughts he’d had of spending all day in bed with Rosemary evaporated. “I will go clean this up, then start coffee?” he said, half-sitting and working his hand between them to take hold of the condom and pull away from her.

Rosemary nodded, and Karl left her there, scooping his boxers off the ground as he left the bedroom, disposing of the condom, using the toilet, cleaning himself up briefly at her bathroom sink. As he left the bathroom for the kitchen, Rosemary emerged from the bedroom, buried in her oversized red robe, and her face lit up at the sight of him. He paused there in the short entry hall, grabbing her and pulling her close as she passed so that he could lean down to press a kiss to her cheek. She glowed up at him, and turned her head, letting her lips brush softly at the corner of his mouth again, before extracting herself from his embrace and heading towards the bathroom herself.

Over coffee, Karl almost offered to stay again, to spend the rest of his day with Rosemary. But she’d closed herself off again during the time she’d spent in the bathroom, and he didn’t quite dare to push… and yes, of course, there was that quarterly review she needed to get done. Mr. Carter wasn’t the sort of person you disappointed. So he returned to his apartment and gathered up the dirty laundry of the past week and made his way to the basement.

It seemed as if half the apartment building had decided to do their laundry as well. All of the washers were full, so he returned to his apartment and tried to find something to do. He’d spent so little time there over the past few weeks, only just long enough to change and shower each day. Somehow, over the past few weeks, his apartment had turned into an extended closet; it was Rosemary’s apartment he felt at home in.

He whiled away a half-hour in dusting, in tidying his already-pristine rooms, pulling out a granola bar and eating it in bits and pieces as he did. He checked the laundry room again, but the washers had been emptied and filled again by unknown hands, and he could not face staying in his empty apartment a moment longer. So he loaded his pockets with more granola bars and left the apartment building, taking himself on a long walk, crossing and recrossing the paths of Goddard’s campus, wishing that winter here got even half as cold as it did in Russia. He wanted a biting, freezing wind, the sort that would knock some sense into him, get his brain working properly, but instead the air was muggy and still. Eventually, he found a little scenic patch, a man-made pond and a bench, and just sat, staring into the water, until it started to get dark, until his stomach started to protest the day’s lack of proper meals.

There would still be leftovers in Rosemary’s apartment. And more importantly, if he was lucky, there would be Rosemary.

Rosemary answered his knock promptly. A little crease of concern appeared between her eyebrows at the sight of him, and she pulled him into her apartment and wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight against her. “What’s wrong?”

Karl smiled and wrapped his arms around her as well, kissing the top of her head. “Nothing, now.”

She pulled back and looked back up at him, still with that little crease on her face, but after a moment she smiled back at him. “All right. Dinner?”

“Please.”

They were both quiet and contemplative over the meal. Rosemary kept glancing his way nervously, and her nervousness infected Karl, leaving him tense and anxious by the end of the meal.

“What about you? Is something wrong?” he finally asked as he rinsed the last of the dishes they had used for dinner, before wiping his hands dry and turning to look at Rosemary where she was still perched on her chair, watching him.

Rosemary shook her head. “I’m just… it’s been a lot, getting this quarterly review pushed ahead like this. I feel like a juggler with a baker’s dozen worth of knives in the air, you know? I think I’ve got everything together, but if there’s something I missed…”

“It will cut you?”

“Yeah.”

Karl tilted his head to one side and considered her. “Would you like to have someone else take control of your life for a little while?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

He shoved his plate aside and reached across the table to take Rosemary’s hand. “Then come with me.”

Karl had been the one strapped to the bed so far, but tonight she let him push her gently down on the bed, let him attach straps one by one, let him tease her as she protested and squirmed under him. Of course, she could easily have gotten free, but he thought that she was relishing the chance to cede control to him, as she had never quite managed to do. Even that first night they’d spent together, when he’d ordered her not to touch him, she hadn’t quite been able to resist in the end.

But this time, there was no chance of that. This time, she would be utterly at his mercy.

He settled himself between her thighs once he was sure she was secure, sitting back on his heels, looking down at her body spread before him like a feast, trying to decide where he wanted to start. Rosemary had started to breathe harder by the time both of the wrist restraints were on; by now, she was nearly panting with lust, lifting her head to stare across the expanse of her stomach at him with luminous eyes, with those gorgeous lips of hers parted, the tip of her tongue darting out to moisten them. “Did you just tie me up like this so you could get a good look at me, you infuriating man? Do something!” she demanded.

Karl chuckled at that, and leaned forward, pressing his hands into the mattress on either side of her torso and staring down at her. “Just for that, I think I will just stare for another minute or two. Perhaps longer.” He let his eyes flick down, to her breasts, to her stomach and its fascinating tracery of stretch marks, to the curved scar at the bottom of her abdomen. “After all, there is such a wealth of sights to behold.”

Rosemary groaned at that, and somehow managed to brace her feet against the mattress, thrusting her hips up against his. Karl tut-tutted at the maneuver and sat back on his heels, then slid further down to increase the tension on the bonds that connected her ankles to the bed frame.

“You really do not cede control easily, do you, suka,” he said conversationally as he made sure she would not be able to attempt such a maneuver again.

“Not to you,” she said, watching him tighten the straps. “You're not safe for me.” Something about that phrasing struck Karl, and he tucked it away for future consideration.

“And yet here you are, tied up and at my mercy,” he said, smirking at her.

Rosemary rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. These straps are only held on with velcro. If I were really determined, I could be out of them in a second.”

“Well, then,” Karl said as he settled between her thighs again and reached forward to trail light fingers along the scar on her abdomen, “Why have you not freed yourself, if I am so unsafe for you?”

Rosemary sighed and shut her eyes, letting her head drop back against the pillow. “Because I've been safe for too long. And maybe I've forgotten how to live.”

Karl continued tracing his fingers across Rosemary’s stomach, exploring the shiny tracks of stretch marks, but returning, time and again, to that scar, to that sign of a past he'd only encountered a fraction of. “You are the most alive person I have ever met,” he told her, something about the intimacy of the moment bringing thoughts he hadn't even been fully aware of to the surface. “You have a will of iron and a spine of steel and a mind that burns as bright as phosphorous, and you are alive, Rosemary, gloriously and brilliantly.”

Karl bent over her and kissed that scar that he kept returning to, then lifted his head and did something he'd wanted to do since the first time he had seen her naked and traced one of those stretch marks of hers with his tongue. Rosemary shivered and strained against the bonds, but didn't make a move to remove them from herself, and Karl took it as a good sign.

“If I'm full of life, then perhaps it's my death that's missing,” Rosemary said breathlessly. “Where do you suppose it is, Marya Morevna? In a needle inside an egg inside a duck, buried in a chest on a barren island somewhere?”

“If your death is in such a place, I do not intend to seek it out,” Karl said, smiling as he pressed a line of kisses to Rosemary’s stomach, moving up her body an inch a time. “And I do not think this sort of thing is why Marya Morevna kept Koschei in bonds.”

“You never know,” Rosemary said, letting out a little whimper and arching her back off the bed as his mouth found her nipple. “I bet Marya was a kinky bitch. Ivan always seemed a bit milquetoast for her.”

Karl chuckled a bit at that and slapped the side of her hip with his open palm, making Rosemary yelp and wiggle underneath him. “You are being deliberately ridiculous,” he said, resting his chin between her breasts and staring up at her. “Is this an attempt to distract me?”

Rosemary snarled and bared her teeth at him. “Oh, absolutely, my warrior princess. Just wait until I get loose and you have a deathless sorcerer on your hands.”

Karl sat up and looked around the room in a deliberately comical manner, then turned back to Rosemary. “I do not see any milquetoast Ivan come to set you free. I am afraid that if you wish to be released from your bonds, you will have to beg that kinky bitch Marya.” As he spoke, he scooted his knees up closer between Rosemary’s thighs, so that when he leaned forward to tease her again, his hard cock was brushing her stomach and he could nuzzle up against her neck, nibble the curve of her ear, press kisses to her cheek, the tip of her nose, the tender little place just under her brow bone, right next to the corner of her eye. As he did, she sighed and pressed her lips to every part of him she was able to reach. When he pulled back to look at her, her lips were still pursed in the kiss she'd been pressing to his neck, but then they opened, and for just a moment he was tempted to lean back in, to brush his own mouth against hers. But no—she had not once kissed him on the mouth of her own volition, and she had turned away the times he had tried to kiss her there, and so he had stopped trying, figuring she would initiate such a kiss when she was ready. He would not force such a kiss on her, not here, not now, when she was tied up and helpless beneath him.

But still, he could not help but lean in close, nuzzling her face gently, breathing in the scent of her, imagining what they might be like, those kisses she would not give him.

Rosemary felt as if her every nerve was on fire, each little brush of Karl’s body against hers setting off a rush of sensation that left her limbs weak, her head reeling. She had submitted to partners before, let them guide her encounter with them… but this was the first time she had allowed someone to tie her down, to restrain her. Even when playing the soft, submissive lover, she had always kept some measure of control in the past.

Not this time, though.

Something about this felt important, for all that she’d been teasing him, being deliberately ridiculous. He’d been so good to her, so tender, so kind, and some part of her wanted to repay him, to find a way to let down her guard and let him in. She didn’t know if the act of forcing herself to submit to him fully would be enough for that to happen; she guarded her heart, her soul, the very core of herself so unconsciously these days that she didn’t even know if it was possible to let herself submit entirely.

But something about Karl made her want to.

She still wanted to kiss him, Rosemary realized. It hadn’t been a one-time impulse, not a reaction to sex with a new partner. Right now,he was nuzzling her face, his lips parted, breathing her in, and it would be so easy, even with her bonds, for her to tilt her head just an inch, press her lips fully to his.

She didn’t. She couldn’t. But oh, god, how she wanted him.

Karl pulled back from her face again, pressing lips to her neck, exploring there as she arched her head to one side to give him better access, pressing soft, fluttery kisses to her skin that left her fluttering inside as well. It was clear that he wanted to take things slow, to drive her mad with lust bit by bit, but she was already so tense, wound so tight that his slow, careful actions were almost unbearable. Still, she could give him this. She would give him this.

“For a kinky bitch, Marya’s quite the gentle lover,” Rosemary murmured against the side of Karl’s head, trying to distract herself from her own body, from the fear and lust and sensation that had been overwhelming her since he’d strapped the last bond to her ankle.

“Ah, well,” he said, pressing a trail of kisses down her breastbone. “Perhaps she has decided that deathless sorcerers are like horses.”

“Like horses?” Rosemary asked, briefly amused, then gasping and arching off the bed as his lips closed around her nipple again, as his tongue teased the tip.

He lifted his head and gave her one of his endearing little almost-smiles, and growled, “Of course. They must be broken in before they can be ridden.” And then, he turned his attention to her other breast, pressing a kiss to one of the pale stretch marks that streaked the skin of it, then another, until she was whimpering under him.

“Please…” Rosemary begged, breathless and panting.

“Please, what? Tell me, moy smertnyy,” he said, resting his chin between her breasts again to look up at her, his voice still a low growl that swept its way down her spine and left her squirming.

“God, please fuck me,” Rosemary gasped, trying desperately to clench her thighs together, to relieve some of the tension winding through her body. But he’d made it impossible for her to find relief or release by herself when he’d tied her to the bed so securely. She couldn’t even move enough to clench her thighs against the sides of his legs, couldn’t do much more than arch her spine off the bed helplessly, lift her head to stare back at him. She did so now, trying to show him how desperate she was for him in a look. But his face had a sweet, almost affectionate expression on it as he gazed back at her, and she could not bear sweetness, not now. “Yebat’ menya, Dmitri,” she said, using the words that had sent him over the edge that first night they’d been together.

This time, Karl’s eyes widened, but he shook his head and smacked her hip with his open hand again, and she yelped in response. “That will not work this time, suka. I am Marya Morevna, remember? And I have Koschei Bessmertnyy…” he sat up, trailing fingers over her breasts, down her stomach. “…tied up here for me, waiting to be tamed.”

“I’m as safe and secure as a deathless sorcerer ever is,” Rosemary moaned, trying to lift her hips off the bed. “So fuck me, you kinky bitch.” She was mentally cursing the fact that she’d attempted to press up against him too soon, given away the fact that she’d started with enough slack to bend her knees. She couldn’t now, so instead she was reduced to writhing under Karl, fighting against the bonds holding her firm to the surface of the bed, her mind no longer functioning well enough to remember that a twist of her wrist and a flick of the fingers could loosen the velcro holding her in place. And then she felt his fingers slip between the lips of her cunt, heard the little gasp he let out as he realized how slick and wet she was for him, and it was all too much again. All she could hear was the rushing of blood in her ears, all she could feel was his fingers as he brought her to an orgasm in a matter of seconds. A scream split the air, and she thought it had probably come from her own mouth, but she was too far gone to tell.

The sensation changed, and she had just enough brainpower left to think that he must have set his mouth to her cunt, that his tongue must be teasing her clit now, that his fingers were now inside her, finding that rough little spot inside her that felt so good when he rubbed it, but then what little ability to think she had remaining to her was wiped away as his actions eked a second orgasm out of her body. This time there was no scream, only a low moan that seemed to go on forever, a choked gasp as the sensation became too much.

Karl used his tongue to gentle Rosemary through the end of what he suspected was the second orgasm in as many minutes for her, then lifted his head and pulled his torso back up over hers, pressing her into the mattress with his weight as she shivered under him, pressing kisses to her neck and shoulder as her head lolled back against the pillow. “Hush, moy smertnyy. I am here. I have you safe.”

Her eyes fluttered open after a moment, and she turned her head so that she could nuzzle at his ear, his cheek. “You going to fuck me now?” she asked in a breathless little voice.

He nestled his head against her shoulder and lifted a hand to tilt her face towards him, looking her in the eye. “Will you be able to bear it?” he asked in return, studying her face, his eyebrows creasing together in a little frown of concern.

“Mmm-hmm,” she hummed, with a little nod, her lids heavy, her expression seductive. “Yebat’ menya, Marya Morevena. Show me what you do to a deathless sorcerer once she’s broken.”

As usual, Rosemary’s clumsy Russian, her tongue tripping over the consonants, her vowels just a little slurred, left him feeling a rush of affection and and an even stronger rush of lust for this ridiculous woman, who so clearly was not comfortable with the language but who attempted it anyway, knowing that he missed hearing it from other mouths than his own. He pressed another kiss to her neck, to the pulse point just below her ear, then went to her bedside table and got a condom out of the drawer.

Once he had rolled the condom on, however, he could not quite resist teasing her once more, thrusting between her legs, letting his cock slide along the lips of her cunt and across that sensitive clit of hers, even more so now that she’d climaxed at least once. She let out a gasp, and a groan, and suddenly more clumsy Russian was pouring out of her, her tone pleading. “Yebat’ menya, Masha moya. Pozhaluysta. Pozhaluysta, lyubite menya.”

For a moment, he did not know how to react.

Please love me, she had said.

Did she know she had said it, he wondered?

Did she mean it?

But right here, in this moment, it didn’t matter if she’d meant it or not, because right now it was enough to thrust inside her, to feel her tight and slick and hot around him, to slide a hand down between them and find her clit again, until she spasmed around him once more and took him with her over the edge. He collapsed against her, his lips against her neck, tasting the sweat that had beaded on her skin, and there he stayed for what felt like a very long time indeed, until he heard the rip of velcro and felt Rosemary’s arms close around him. There was the press of her lips against his scalp, then a low murmur of “Could you get off me now? My legs are falling asleep.”

Karl nodded, but did not answer, his breath trapped in his chest, his voice trapped in his throat. The most he could manage was a little whimper at the sensation as he wrapped his fingers around the base of his cock to hold the condom in place and pulled himself out of her.

He couldn’t quite bring himself to look her in the eye in that moment, because he knew that the instant he did, he would ask her what she had meant.

Please love me, she had said, and Karl’s heart had leapt forward at those words, but this entire thing had been so strange, so confused, the two of them playing at being people they were not. So instead of looking at her, instead of even delaying long enough to help her with the bonds on her legs, he made a mad dash for the bathroom to clean himself up.

He splashed water on his face at the sink once he’d cleaned himself off, used the toilet, and he stared into her mirror, meeting his reflection’s eyes. Could he ask her? Did he dare?

Karl dried his face off and made his way cautiously back to the bedroom, pausing in the doorway and simply watching Rosemary for a moment. She’d released her legs from the bonds and was rubbing sensation back into them, a grimace on her face. After a moment, she spotted him.

“There you are,” she said, her tone grumpy. “Get over here and fix the problem you caused, you dreadful man.”

“Ah, there is my suka,” Karl said, smiling and crossing the room to the bed, sitting on the side of it so that he could take one of her calves in hand and rub it gently. “I was worried I would be stuck with Bessmertnyy forever.”

“I’m not your bitch or anyone else’s,” Rosemary shot back, her voice tart. She started working on her other leg, and there was a long, pregnant silence that hung in the air between them. Eventually, Rosemary broke it. “You know, my Russian really is terrible,” she said, staring down at her leg, obviously just as reluctant to meet his eyes now as he had been to meet hers before leaving the room. “I’m not entirely certain what I said there at the end. It wasn’t anything terribly rude, was it?”

Karl thought, from the tone of her voice, that she knew exactly what she had said… and that she regretted it, and was now trying to give herself plausible deniability. “I cannot say I was really paying attention to what you said,” he told her, digging fingers into her upper leg and getting a little moan of relief from her. “In any case, your pronunciation is so terrible as to be incomprehensible.”

“Well. That’s good,” she said, sounding a little forlorn. Had she wanted him to push the issue? Now he was having second thoughts, but he suspected it was too late to turn things around, to ask her what she’d meant.

But deep inside his mind, where she couldn’t hear, where even he barely recognized it as a part of himself, there was an echo.

Pozhaluysta.

Pozhaluysta, lyubite menya.

Later, when Rosemary had cleaned herself up, when she returned to the bed at his side, she clung to him and he to her, like two shipwrecked people who had suddenly found a safe harbor in each other.


	21. In Which Cutter Interferes And It All Goes To Shit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starts sweet and smutty and fully intends to rip your heart out by the end.

December 17th, 1990

Karl wasn’t entirely certain what had woken him at first. And then he felt the soft brush of Rosemary’s lips against his cheek, against the corner of his mouth, against… no. She stopped, so close he could feel her breath, feel the warmth of her lips almost but not quite touching his own.

He froze, cracking his eyes open to watch her, his entire body tensing, hoping, waiting, but instead of her mouth on his, he felt the rush of breath as she sighed, then pulled away.

His arm snapped out, before he thought about it, grasping the back of her neck and drawing her head steadily back against his shoulder. She laughed a bit, and let him, pressing a line of kisses to his neck, his collarbone.

“Good morning to you too,” she said, her voice raspy and warm.

Karl grunted and pressed a kiss to her forehead, to her cheek, nibbled her ear. He was hard, and felt… needy. This had lasted so much longer than he’d ever expected, had been so much sweeter, given how prickly Rosemary was, even now, even when they’d been sharing a bed for the better part of a month.

But this morning her prickles were nowhere to be found; instead, her lips were on his chest, finding a nipple and making him gasp and grind against her, her hands were sliding down his back, his hips, pulling him against her.

He caressed her in return, kissing every inch of skin he could reach, stroking fingers along her curves. After a few minutes that felt like a small eternity, locked in her embrace, she broke away long enough to go digging for a condom, opened it, sheathed him in it, then pushed him onto his back and grabbed him by the wrists, pushing him down into the bed with her weight as she took him inside her.

He let her control the encounter, let her press him into the mattress, enjoying the nip of her teeth against his shoulder, the feeling of her breasts heavy against his chest, the tight, hot compression of her cunt around him. It was over quickly, far more quickly than he wanted, but blyad, how good it was while it lasted. And after, she released his wrists, but stayed there on top of him, nuzzling against his neck, letting him hold her.

“Karl?”

“Hm?”

“I…” He felt Rosemary’s mouth working, trying to form words against his shoulder, and then she sighed. “Nothing much. We should get going if we want coffee, is all.”

Karl stroked a hand down the length of her spine, then smacked her playfully on the ass. “Well, then. Remove your body from mine, suka, and I will slip home and get washing up out of way.”

Rosemary had yelped and wiggled against him as he’d smacked her, and he finally slipped out of her, the spread of wetness against his groin making him suspect the condom had lost containment. She felt it too, and rolled off him, going after the tissues on the bedside table. “Sorry about that.” They cleaned the mess up together, Rosemary amused, almost giggly. “Sex can be quite a messy business, can’t it,” she said after, gathering up the wad of tissues and the condom and rolling back towards her bedside table to dispose of them in the trashcan, and as she did, he rolled over behind her, wrapping his arm around her middle, pressing kisses to her neck. She laughed and squirmed back against him, and for a moment Karl wished he were younger, faster to recover, wished he could be hard again in an instant and take her again.

Even on the weekends, when Sundays at least tended to be free of work, they didn’t dare spend all day in bed together, but today… today he was wishing they’d risked it yesterday. He’d expected to have worked her out of his system by now, but instead he’d found himself craving more and more time with her. Instead, he found himself loving her, and he still did not know what to do about that.

“Enough, Karl,” she said, but she was still smiling, a laugh still on her lips, her body still nestled back against his. “Go take your shower.”

He sighed and pressed one more kiss to the back of her neck, then rolled out of the bed and went hunting for the clothes he’d discarded so hastily the night before, so eager to get her into bed that he hadn’t been paying attention to where anything ended up. He finally located his shirt under her bed, and pulled it over his head.

Rosemary had watched this scavenger hunt with a delighted smile on her face, and once he pulled his shirt on she rolled out of bed herself and offered him his glasses. He let her place them on his face, smoothing the earpieces over his ears, tweaking them to sit straight on his nose, and when she was done he leaned close to press a kiss to her neck, right below the ear. She sighed, and tilted her head to one side, giving him better access for a moment, then smacked his shoulder lightly. “Go on, you. Unless you don’t want coffee.”

He pulled back, smiling back at her. “I want coffee. Will return shortly.”

“Good.”

It always surprised Karl how quickly Rosemary managed to get ready in the morning. In the time it took him to sluice himself off, to hunt down fresh clothing—he’d meant to do laundry this past weekend, but he’d spent most of Saturday in the lab and most of his Sunday pacing his apartment, then roaming the grounds of the Goddard complex, counting down the hours until he could rejoin Rosemary in her apartment—in that short span of time, she’d managed to start the coffee, take a quick shower herself, do her makeup. He’d asked her how she managed it, one morning last week, and she’d simply shrugged and answered with “Habit, I suppose. And practice. I’ve had to be ready and presentable on very short notice hundreds of times over the past fifteen years. One gets fast, in that time.”

Rosemary hadn’t yet put her wig on, though, hadn’t bothered slipping into her jacket. It was endearing to him, how willing Rosemary was to show him the person who lived under her corporate armor.

Endearing was dangerous, where Rosemary was concerned, but it was endearing all the same.

Back in her apartment, on either side of the little round table in her kitchen, they sat in silence, each nursing a mug of black coffee, each mentally trying to get into the space they needed to be for the day.

Each casting shy glances across the table at each other, each far too distracted by the simple presence of this other person, here, close, domestic.

After they were done with this morning ritual, Karl left first, pausing by her chair to lean down and kiss her cheek.

“Dinner tonight?” she asked.

“Of course. You will be done at usual time?”

“If today’s quarterly review with Carter goes well,” she said, making a face. “But if not, well, I’ll probably be playing catch-up all day.”

“I will look for you.”

Rosemary smiled, reached up to cup his cheek in her hand. “All right.” She bit her lower lip, clung to him for a moment. “And… and if nothing else comes up…”

Karl went very still, waiting for her next words. “Yes, suka?” he finally asked when she seemed to be having trouble getting them out.

“I… if nothing else comes up, I think I’d… I’d like to spend Christmas with you.”

Karl let out a soft little cry of delight and wrapped his arms around her. He couldn’t resist kissing her cheek again and again, breathing her in, wishing that he could drag her back to bed and spend all day there with her.

But instead he stood up straight, and left, and went on with the routine of his Monday.

Rosemary grimaced and shifted in the uncomfortable chair she’d been in for the past few hours. Today’s quarterly review with Mr. Carter had been painful, to say the least. He’d found very little to be pleased about; after all, maintaining a what was already a very high standard wasn’t good enough for him. He preferred the sort of people who were able to push the standards even higher than they’d been before.

Rosemary was usually that sort of person, but the past month in particular she’d been, well, just a little bit more distracted than she usually was. Not that she’d meant to be, of course.

“Sloppy work, Rosemary. Not your style at all,” had been repeated more than once, and it had grated on her nerves each time, left her wanting to shout that of course it was going to be just a little bit sloppy, when he’d shoved their meeting up by four days, when she had one fewer meeting with her scientists to work with.

And he hadn’t been all that pleased with her proposal for Gao, either.

But thank god, they’d gotten through all her reports finally, and soon she’d be free.

“One more thing before you go, Rosemary,” Carter said, opening a file folder and scanning the top piece of paper in it.

Rosemary had been about to stand, but instead subsided back into her chair and folded her hands in her lap, suppressing a sigh. “Yes, of course, sir.”

Mr. Carter ignored her, continuing to look over the open file in front of him, and Rosemary gritted her teeth in annoyance. “Sir,” She prompted. “I do have work to do.”

Mr. Carter cleared his throat. “Work, or Dr. Kelley?”

Rosemary let out a startled noise.

“Now, Rosemary, you know I don’t usually turn my eye to your little… affairs. But you’ve always known where to draw the line in the past, and it’s never affected the day to day running of the lab before.” Mr. Carter closed the file in front of him and looked up with a predatory smile. “And now it is. These statistics are troubling, Rosemary.”

Rosemary swallowed dryly. “Sir?”

“Your meetings with dear, dear Karl have been going 5.7% longer than average, and there are more of them. You’ve been leaving earlier, putting in fewer weekend hours. You’re being obvious. It’s enough to make me wonder if you’re losing your… edge.”

“I really don’t know what you mean, sir.” Rosemary managed to say, but her heart sank. She knew… god, she knew she was letting this affect her. But after so many years, the pull of someone who understood all of her, and who wanted to be near her because of it… Al knew everything there was to know about her, but he was a military man at heart, not a scientist. And Karl was the first scientist in years who hadn’t treated her with utter condescension, or written her off as just the staff.

Mr. Carter was watching her face, and must have read a good deal of what she was thinking from it. He gave her a pitying look. “Did he praise your intelligence, Rosie?” He said, his tone almost paternal, caring. “Did he tell you that you’re smart?”

Rosemary lifted her head and stared fixedly at a corner of the ceiling on the far side of Mr. Carter’s vast office as she answered. “I understand, sir. I’ll put an end to it.” She dropped her gaze to him, the frost back in place over her emotions, where it belonged. “Are we done?”

Mr. Carter nodded.

And the shell of the person who had long ago been Rosemary Epps left Mr. Carter’s office, wrapping her emotions back up the frost that had hidden them from the world for so long.

There was a knock on Adriane’s office door, and then Rosemary strode in without preamble. “I need to see the productivity statistics for my lab. Myself. Kelley.”

Adriane frowned. “Rosmarin…”

“And don’t give me crap about not having the right clearance level for them, because I know I do.”

“Well, yes, but Mr. Carter is technically the only one who is allowed—”

“Adriane. Please.“ Rosemary’s voice was tight with anxiety and just a tinge of fear.

Adriane had heard many things in Rosemary’s voice over the years, but fear had never been one of them. “Give me a moment.” She went into the backend of the Goddard intranet and pulled the figures up on her computer, then shoved back from her desk and stood, stepping aside so Rosemary could sit.

It apparently only took Rosemary only a few minutes to find what she was looking for; her skin went pale and ashy as she scrolled through the statistics, and a little worried crease grew between her eyebrows. And then, like a conjuring trick, every sign of distress erased itself off of Rosemary’s face. She stood and nodded to Adriane. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

Rosemary made as if to leave Adriane’s office, but Adriane called her back.

“Rosmarin?”

“Yes?”

“If something is the matter…”

Rosemary shook her head and let out a light laugh that almost managed to not sound forced. “Everything’s fine. Everything’s perfect, Adriane.” And then, she was gone.

Adriane sat back down at her desk and looked over the statistics herself.

Oh, Rosmarin, she found herself thinking, when finally she recognized the pattern. Oh, what have you done.

Miranda strode through the door of William’s office and shut it behind her with a firm click, asking without preamble “Is it done?”

William looked up from the latest report from the aeronautics division with a frown. “Yes, Miranda. Rosemary should be back to her usual efficient self.”

“Thank god.” Miranda’s latest prototypes didn’t do subtle expression well, but they still twitched in a facsimile of an eye roll. “You know, I came across them fraternizing in the hallway.”

“Yes, Miranda. You told me.”

“She was giggling. It was disgusting.”

“Hm.”

Miranda finally picked up on his dissatisfaction, and frowned. “What, did I interrupt one of your little projects?”

William set the report aside and sighed. “Rosemary was helping me with the little matter of Dr. Kelley’s… social issues. She was in the best position to do so, and I’m really not sure what to try next now that she’s off the board.”

“So I did interrupt a project.”

“No, no, you were right to bring it to my attention. That level of attachment was an unforeseen circumstance. It needed to be nipped in the bud.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re so concerned about that man’s social life. I’ve certainly never needed one to be efficient at my job.”

“Other people aren’t you, Miranda.” William paused, and smiled. “And I’m just a little bit hurt. What would you do if I wasn’t here for you to bother?”

Miranda’s prototypes twitched again, another attempt at an eye roll. “I’d go back to my lab and get on with my work.”

Karl was late leaving the lab. Well, later than he’d meant to be, at least. He had promised to eat dinner with Rosemary before leaving her apartment that morning, but if she’d left the lab complex at her usual time, she would have been waiting for more than an hour by now. He checked his watch and cursed. Nearly two hours, then.

Karl sighed and rubbed a hand over the back of his head, pushing through the outer doors of the lab complex with his other hand. For all his lateness had been unavoidable, for all he knew she would understand when he told her that he’d been waylaid by Pryce, of all people, he still hated to keep Rosemary waiting.

That thing with Pryce had been strange, Karl reflected as he made his way towards the on-site apartments. He had been in a rush as he left his lab; he had been thinking his way through a problem with one of his side projects. He’d lost track of time, so when he had looked down at his watch and realized that Rosemary had most likely been back in her apartment for all of fifteen minutes, he’d set the pile of notes aside at once without bothering to put it in its usual end-of-day order.

But when he had paused on the floor where Rosemary’s office was, just to make sure she’d actually gone home, Pryce had appeared from down a side corridor and had taken him by the elbow and started interrogating him about his current projects. Karl had tried to politely extract himself from the conversation, but Pryce was one of those people it was impossible to politely extract oneself from, and given the position she held at the company, it was very inadvisable to attempt impolitely extracting oneself from a conversation with her.

So here he was, walking across the parking lot in front of the apartments, nearly two hours later than he had meant to be. Karl’s heart lifted when he saw that the light in Rosemary’s living room was still on, and a little bit more when he saw a shadow pass by the blinds. Good. She hadn’t given up on him and gone to bed alone.

He’d only been sleeping in her bed for a few weeks, but he already hated the idea of her going to bed alone.

Karl went straight to the door of Rosemary’s apartment and knocked lightly, then tried the knob. The past few times he’d left the lab complex later than her, she’d left her door unlocked for him. But the knob didn’t turn. He rattled it a few times to make sure it was locked and not just stuck, but it remained stubbornly unmoving.

He frowned and listened at the door. There was silence from inside Rosemary’s apartment. Perhaps she’d dozed off while reading a paper—no, he thought, remembering the shadow he’d seen on the blinds. He tried knocking again, a little louder.

What if she is not alone in there? A treacherous thought intruded. What if she has company and it is not me? He shook his head to clear the thought. If she had company, he would be able to hear something from inside. Voices, or… Rosemary was not a quiet woman. Not around other people, not in any context.

The door remained stubbornly closed, and he started to panic a little. What if the shadow he’d seen had been her right before she had hurt herself somehow? What if she was unconscious, injured? He pounded on the door, hard, calling her name through it.

“Rosemary, please, if you are all right, come to the door.” He flinched at the sound of his own voice, tight and desperate. “At least answer me if you can.”

He heard a creak, then the sound of the deadbolt being drawn back and the rattle of the chain being removed. Rosemary opened her front door, and he noted with surprise that she was still in her wig and makeup, still wearing her blouse and skirt. She leaned against the doorframe, staring coolly at him. “What?”

“I’m sorry. I’m late. Why didn’t you come to the door?”

Rosemary gave an expressive one-shouldered shrug, that said without words that his lateness meant nothing to her. “I didn’t want your company tonight. I thought that would be obvious from context.”

Karl tried to slow his panicked breathing a little. “I see. Well, you are used to living alone. If you need some space tonight… I will be back tomorrow, then?”

Rosemary gave him a blank stare. “Whatever for?”

Karl frowned. “To… to…” he swallowed. He could not think of anything that didn’t sound ridiculous. To keep you company? To just be with you? No, she would scoff at both of those. Despite letting him sleep in her bed each night, despite mornings spent silently—but companionably—over coffee in her kitchen, she still retreated from him more often than he would like.

Rosemary looked him up and down, sharp, assessing glance that measured him and clearly found him wanting. “Look,” she said in a cold, stern tone. “Playing house with you was kind of fun for a few weeks, I’ll admit. And the use of your body was an excellent bonus. But, well, I’m not really the domestic sort. And I’m getting bored.” Another once-over, and a little smirk. “Your repertoire… it just isn’t varied enough to keep me interested long-term. And anyway, I miss having my bed to myself. So it’s better to break it off now. We were getting into a nasty little habit of pretending we’re actually friendly with one another, and both you and I know that’s not true at all. So let’s stop here, hm?”

Karl’s mouth was dry, and his breath was stopped in his chest, but somehow he managed to force out a shattered-sounding “Rosemary…”

She continued to smirk, a cold expression that didn’t make it to her eyes. “Oh, you poor sweet idiot of a man.” She reached up and cupped his cheek, almost tenderly, but it was somehow a mockery of every time she’d done the same thing over the past few weeks. “You actually thought I was starting to feel something real for you, didn’t you?”

Karl shoved her hand away from his face angrily and cursed. “Blyad, suka. I do not wish to have this discussion in the hallway where anyone could see us,” he growled.

“Fine. Then don’t,” said Rosemary, her tone nonchalant. Before he could react, she had stepped back into her apartment and shut the door in his face. He could only stare at it, aghast, listening as she put up the chain and threw the deadbolt home. He pounded on the door with his fist again, but after the first few knocks only got a yelled “Stop that, Kelley, before someone decides to call security on you,” through the door from Rosemary, he gave up.

Every muscle in his body felt tense, wound up with rage and… yes, grief. Was this really how it was going to end between them? When she had been amorous and warm just that morning, cozying up to him in bed, when she had said that she would like to spend Christmas with him? He would have lingered longer with her, would have spent more time dallying over their shared morning coffee, if he had known the day was going to end like this.

He gritted his teeth and headed back towards his own apartment door, then realized he had left his own apartment keys back in the lab. Well. He was too tense to sleep anyway, and his keycard could get him back into the lab complex. The walk would do him good.

He could face coming back to his empty apartment later.

Rosemary slept on her couch that night. She was afraid that if she slept in her bed, if she could smell him on her sheets, on her pillows, she’d start crying and never stop, and the last thing she wanted was for him to hear her through the thin wall that separated their apartments. So she pulled a spare blanket out of her closet, and she found the decorative pillow that had come with the couch and which had been stuffed behind a side table for some reason she couldn’t remember, and she curled up as small as she could on the couch and resolved to do laundry that weekend.

She could bear sleeping on her couch for a week. She just couldn’t bear to cry where he could hear her.

Her eyes pricked and stung all night.

But the tears never came.  
  



	22. Goddard Futuristics Christmas Parties are Hell (especially when the woman you love is flirting with everyone but you)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No smut, but some Al Bennett, who is perhaps the most cursed OC I’ve ever made.

December 24th, 1990

Karl lurked at the edge of the large event room, almost a ballroom, that the mandatory company Christmas party was taking place in, nursing the glass of champagne a waiter had foisted on him when he’d entered the room and staring at a sadly deflated streamer on the wall in a concentrated fashion that distracted him handily from the fact that Rosemary was on the other side of the room, wearing a low-cut red dress that left almost nothing to the imagination, laughing and flirting her way through the crowd. She’d completely ignored him all evening; if she happened to glance his direction, her eyes passed over him as if he were a nonentity.

Of course, he also hoped it would dissuade anyone who might try to socialize with him before it got late enough that he could slip out without drawing down Carter’s ire. So far it had worked, but as the general level of drunkenness in the room got higher, he suspected it was only a matter of time before someone decided to accost him. And that time, apparently, was right now.

“Less than a month. That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen someone strike out with Miss Rosie,” came a voice from over Karl’s shoulder. He turned to find the same man he’d met briefly in Rosemary’s apartment the first night they’d spent together… what was the man’s name again? Robert? Hal? Rosemary had told Karl this man’s name and Karl had immediately forgotten it. Whatever his name, he loomed over Karl, looking down at him with a sort of tolerant amusement, before holding his hand out in prelude to a handshake. “Albert Bennett, at your service. And you’ll be Doctor Kelley.”

“Yes. Karl,” he offered up, along with his hand, which Albert pulled into a bone-crushing handshake. To be fair to Albert, he was very large and he looked to Karl like the sort of man who wasn’t entirely aware of how strong he was, but Karl found himself resenting the other man for the maneuver anyway. “What do you mean, strike out?”

“I know all the signs, Dr. Kelley. You’re the only person in the room she’s ignored all night, and one of Miss Rosie’s favorite things to do at the company Christmas party is fraternize with, well, everyone.”

“Perhaps I have been the one avoiding her.”

“Well, she also pulled me aside and said ‘For God’s sake, Al, find someone else to get that man laid so he’ll stop dogging my footsteps looking as mournful as a basset hound.’”

Karl frowned, then sighed and rubbed a hand over the back of his head. “That does sound like the sort of ridiculous phrasing she would use.”

“So, what was your blunder? Did you assume the flirting and the sex meant there were real feelings involved? Or did you mistake her submissiveness in bed for a willingness to submit in the office as well?” Albert laughed at Karl’s startled expression. “A little bit of both, then.”

Karl shook his head. “No, that is not it at all. Is that why she usually…?” He trailed off, staring at the other man in confusion and getting an equally confused look in return.

“You’re saying you didn’t assume real feelings where there were none?” Albert quirked a dubious eyebrow in Karl’s direction.

Karl flushed. “I am not saying that. I am simply saying… I do not think that had anything to do with why it ended.” He took an awkward gulp of his champagne, grateful it had gone a bit flat while he’d been nursing it. “I just do not understand what did happen. The morning that we… she was fine. But that night…”

Albert was staring at him with a shocked expression.

“What?” asked Karl.

“The morning?” said Albert his tone disbelieving.

“Yes?”

“As in you spent the entire night in her apartment.” Albert was still incredulous.

“Yes, of course,” said Karl, eyeing Albert cautiously.

“On the couch?” asked Albert.

“No, in her bed.”

Albert let out a breathless little “huh,” and looked Karl up and down with an uncomfortable amount of interest. “I’m going to guess you didn’t get much sleep?”

Karl rolled his eyes. “Of course we slept. Most of the night. Like every other night. Why are you interrogating me about my sex life?”

Albert’s eyebrows had come down slowly as he’d interrogated Karl, but they flew back up his forehead at that. “I’m… not really sure I should say,” he said hesitantly. “So you’re telling me you slept in her bed more than once.”

Karl frowned. There was something going on here, and he did not know what, but perhaps if he offered Albert more information, he might be able to get something out of the other man. “Yes. Every night since that night you, ah, offered to, what was it. Shove her my direction.”

Albert gave Karl a strange, long look. “And you caught her, I take it.”

“Yes.” Karl tried to bring his face under control, but he suspected it had twisted briefly into an expression of grief. “Of course I did. How could I not?”  
  


Someone tapped Al on the shoulder, interrupting what was becoming a rather interesting tête-à-tête with Rosie’s latest castoff. The poor man seemed utterly baffled, and Al couldn’t blame him; from what Karl had described so far, it sounded like Rosie hadn’t kept to her usual patterns at all. And that worried Al, just a little. He’d thought it a usual breakup that the other party was taking poorly, but if what Karl was describing was true… Well. Rosie had never done anything like that before. Not since he’d met her.

He didn’t want Karl escaping while he dealt with whoever wanted his attention, so Al stepped close to Karl’s side as he turned, throwing a heavy arm across Karl’s shoulders.

The gorgeous black man who had tapped Al on the shoulder raised startled eyebrows and looked back and forth between Al and Karl, lilting out “Oh dear, am I too late?” in a very pronounced Welsh accent.

Al laughed at that. “Not at all. Just providing some relationship advice to my friend here,” he said, squeezing Karl’s shoulders companionably. Karl let out a startled little ouf of breath. “Karl Kelley, Sterling Jenkins. Karl’s one of Rosie’s lot, Sterling. And Sterling works over in engineering.” Al made the introduction, nudging Karl forward when he seemed cautious about shaking Sterling’s hand. 

Sterling eyed Karl curiously as they shook. "Were you with the company last year, then?“ Sterling asked. "I don’t recall seeing you at any of the mandatory events, and you think I’d have noticed someone as… striking as you are.” He looked Karl up and down curiously, and Al was amused to note that the dour scientist blushed.

“Er,” began Karl, before taking a drink of his champagne and then clearing his throat. “Am, uh, coming up on two year anniversary. Have not cared to spend long at most social events in past.”

Al and Sterling both gave Karl sympathetic looks at that. “Got some thunderous orders from on high to start putting in more than token appearances at these things or so help you God, did ya?” drawled Al.

Karl nodded, a little shamefaced.

Al turned his attention to Sterling, leaving his arm across Karl’s shoulders. “I take it you’d be interested in company tonight?”

Sterling smirked a little at that, his eyes darting to Karl. “Only if you’re not otherwise occupied. And I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to be.”

Al glanced down at Karl, who had just sputtered on the latest sip of champagne. “Think that might be a bit much for him to cope with, honestly.”

“Would appreciate it if the two of you would stop talking about me as if I am not here,” muttered Karl, his nonexistent eyebrows drawing down into a frown and his ears turning very red indeed.

Al and Sterling both laughed at Karl’s disgruntled expression.

“Oh, you are adorable,” murmured Sterling, before flashing a smile at Al. “See you later, then.”

Karl finished off his flute of champagne while the other two men exchanged a few more pleasantries. Then Sterling went on his way, and Al turned back to Karl, his prodigious powers of interrogation at the ready.

Albert smiled after Sterling for a moment or two, then plucked the empty flute of champagne out of Karl’s hand. A waiter appeared as if he’d been summoned, and Albert exchanged the empty glass for a fresh one, adding a wink and a smile and a “Would’ya bring me a glass of water, darlin’?” The waiter turned bright red and nodded, and the tray shook a little as he scampered off to do Albert’s bidding, Karl watching in fascination. And then, Albert’s attention turned back to Karl, his singular focus making Karl feel rather as if he were in a spotlight. “Right. Now let’s get back to the subject of Rosemary. And her letting you sleep in her bed.”

Karl sipped the champagne, and shrugged. “Is it really so unusual?”

Albert laughed. “When we first met, I spent almost every damn evening for four months in her apartment. She let me spend the night once, and once only, and that was when she thought I was too tired to drive, and I was banished to her couch for the duration.” The waiter appeared at Albert’s shoulder with a glass of water, and Albert winked again. “Thanks, darlin’.” The waiter blushed again, and disappeared back into the crowd. Albert sipped his drink—what kind of a man only drinks water at a party? Karl wondered—and looked contemplatively down at Karl for a moment before continuing. “The only time sex wasn’t involved in a visit to her apartment was after she found out I was one of Goddard’s, and that didn’t stop it from being on the table.”

“Well, perhaps not with you, but surely she has had relationships with other people…”

Albert laughed. “Goddard’s vetting process is very, very thorough, Doctor Kelley. We know who she slept with and how going all the way back to the first time she had sex. And we know who she’s been keeping company with and how since she’s been here.”

Karl felt a cold chill down his spine. “And I suppose you’ll tell me Goddard knows the same for me, hm? That is nonsense. Why would they care?”

“Andrei Ivanov. The two of you met when you in high school. Everything was furtive and careful, because you both knew that what you were doing together would be grounds for expulsion, grounds for the other teenagers to hurt you both, grounds for more than one adult in your lives to make life a living hell, to even kill you.”

Karl felt the blood drain from his face. “How?”

Albert’s expression went sardonic, and he lifted his glass of water up as if to toast Karl. “Mr. Carter likes us to be very, very thorough. He likes to know what he can hold over people.”

Karl wondered, suddenly, what Mr. Carter might be holding over Rosemary.

The corner of Albert’s mouth twitched a bit, an almost-smile. “Best not to think about it too much, Doctor. We’ve all got skeletons in our closets. You, me, Rosie, everyone here.”

“I see.” Karl took a larger gulp of his champagne and sputtered a bit on the bubbles.Albert watched with an amused look on his face.

“No, do not come to my aid,” said Karl, somewhat sarcastically, after he’d gotten his breath back. “Will be fine.”

“Clearly you are.” Albert raised an eyebrow. “Though I’m not sure you’ve recovered yet from the root cause of your distress.”

“It is fine. I have plenty of distress to go around, in current state.”

Albert laughed at that. “You really are missing Rosie, aren’t you.”

“Not so much missing, as…” As if on cue, a loud peal of laughter rang out from across the room, and Karl rubbed his free hand over the back of his head anxiously.

A little frown formed between Albert’s eyebrows. “You’re jealous, too, aren’t you?”

“Intensely.”

“Huh.” Albert sipped his water, staring at Karl with his head tilted to one side. “She didn’t kiss you, did she?”

Karl sputtered on the sip of champagne he’d been about to take. “I beg pardon?”

“Not on the body, of course. Body’s fair game. She ever kiss you on the mouth, though?”

Karl thought, for a moment, about the almost-kisses Rosemary had given him those last few days they’d spent together, then shook his head. “No. Never.”

Albert’s eyes lit up. “She ever try?”

Karl frowned. “Why does it matter?”

“Far as I know, she hasn’t kissed someone on the mouth in, oh, three and a half decades.” Albert looked as if he were doing some mental calculations for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, give or take a year or two.”

Karl looked down at his flute of champagne, his jaw clenching. After a moment, he forced out “Yes, she tried.”

Albert let out a low whistle at that. “Hell,” he said, a bit breathless, but before Karl could ask why Albert was reacting that way, they were interrupted yet again, this time by a tall, buxom blonde woman who might be in her late 30s, and who looked, with her rosy cheeks and her crown of braids, very much as if she ought to be wearing a dirndl instead of the evening dress she’d squeezed herself into.

“Al, how good to see you!”

“Gertraud!” Albert transferred his glass of water to the hand that was hanging over Karl’s shoulder still and pulled the woman into a one-armed hug, pressing a smacking kiss to her cheek. “Back from space, then, Liebchen?”

“I have been for five months, as well you know,” said the woman in a heavy Austrian accent. “And you have not visited me once, you naughty man.”

“I’ll have to beg your pardon there. I’ve been on assignment.”

“Ah, well,” the woman said, melting against Albert’s side. “I suppose you must dance to Mr. Carter’s tune as much as the rest of us.” She seemed to notice Karl for the first time, and glanced across Albert at him curiously. “And who is this? Tonight’s conquest, Al?”

Karl felt his ears turn red again, and sipped champagne to hide his discomfort with the fact that everyone who had seen him with Albert so far had apparently also assumed he would be sleeping with the man.

“Gertraud Messer, Karl Kelley. Gertraud’s spent the past couple of years in space, and now she’s off manufacturing pharmaceuticals—where, Gertie?”

“In Kentucky,” said Gertraud, making a face. “And you know I hate it when you call me Gertie.”

“Lucky I’m so handsome, then,” said Albert, with an exaggerated leer at Gertraud. “Must be why you always forgive me.”

Gertraud rolled her eyes. “And where do you work, Mister? Doctor?” At Karl’s nod, she continued. “What department are you in, then, Dr. Kelley?”

“The biochem lab.”

Gertraud’s eyebrows flew up her forehead at that. “Ah, I see. You must be the person they found to take over my old lab, then. Is Rosemary still in charge?”

Karl nodded, and sipped his champagne, only to inhale a bit and start coughing when Gertraud added “So how are you enjoying being brought to heel by Carter’s favorite bitch, then?”

Karl gaped. “I am sorry?”

“Rosemary.” Gertraud smiled at him. “She’s Carter’s bitch through and through. He brings her to heel, and she brings you. Or haven’t you noticed that yet?”

“Ah, no,” said Karl awkwardly. “I have, ah, noticed.” He frowned down at his champagne glass, then looked sidelong up at Albert. “But if Rosemary is Carter’s bitch, then what does that make you?”

Albert laughed. “Oh, I’m more of a sheepdog, really. Bringing all you lost lambs into the fold.” He tugged Gertraud a little closer. “Isn’t that right, Gertie?”

Gertraud rolled her eyes again, and extracted herself from Albert’s arm. “I will leave you to whatever it is you are up to with this… gentleman,” she said, looking Karl up and down contemplatively, then turned to Albert again. “Look me up the next time you are in Kentucky, ja?”

“Of course, Liebchen. Wouldn’t miss out on the chance of your company for the world,” Albert responded, smirking at her.

“Bis später, Al.” Gertraud hit Albert playfully on the arm, then turned and wandered off into the crowd. Karl stared after her with a frown.

“Do they all think that about Rosemary?”

Al had transferred his water glass back to his newly free hand to take another sip, and so just raised his eyebrows questioningly at Karl.

“That Rosemary is…” Karl sighed. “I know it is hypocritical to bristle at that woman calling Rosemary a bitch. I have been calling her suka for months. But do they all… that is…” He couldn’t find the words, and looked to Al for help.

“Do they all keep a cautious distance because they know anything she finds out about them goes straight to Carter?” Al nodded. “Oh, yes.”

“And what, they do not keep the same distance from you?”

Al smiled, a little sardonically. “Ah, well, I make it easy for them to forget. I’m not the one there in the lab, riding their asses about getting stuff done. And people tend to like me. Not that Rosie isn’t likable, but she can be prickly. And she doesn’t make it easy for them to forget who and what she is.”

“Still.”

“Yes. Still.”

They both turned to stare across the room at Rosemary, who had found Gertraud and was apparently catching up with her. Rosemary’s body language was open, friendly, but Gertraud, who had been soft and relaxed in Albert’s presence, seemed stiff and uncomfortable. After a few moments Rosemary patted Gertraud on the arm familiarly and turned to someone new, and Gertraud seemed to sigh with relief as she made her escape.  
  


Karl’s frown had etched itself deep on his face, and Al was just a little bit disturbed by it. The man must really care about Rosie, but Al didn’t know how it had happened. The Rosie he knew always made sure to keep everyone at a careful distance, himself included. Of course, he’d been the one to assemble her file, so it was less that Rosie kept him at a careful distance as it was negotiating an awkward dance where they both pretended he didn’t know as much about her as he did, but it amounted to the same thing in the end.

Perhaps she’d kept Karl at a distance, too. Al supposed it might be possible to care quite deeply about the warm but prickly personality Rosie showed to most of the world; after all, that warmth of hers could be remarkably attractive, if one was capable of ignoring the prickles.

“Why were you so surprised to hear she had tried to kiss me?” asked Karl, his eyes still locked on the ebullient figure of Rosie as she worked the room.

Al considered how much to tell the man. If Rosie hadn’t brought the reason up, Al didn’t think he should be the one to reveal the specifics. On the other hand, offering part of the truth might result in some useful information. “Our Rosie, she’s the sort to shy away from intimacy,” he said finally, after his extended silence had drawn Karl’s attention back to his face. “Well. Somewhere in there, I think she’s linked that up with kissing, is all.” Al raised a sardonic eyebrow at Karl. “So you see why I might find her trying to kiss someone a little surprising.”

“Intimacy…” Karl trailed off, contemplating his already mostly-empty glass of champagne for a moment and then taking a swig that finished it off. “Yes. I suppose that there were ways in which we were very intimate.”

“Oh?” prompted Al.

Karl was getting flushed from the alcohol—he’d finished the better part of two glasses of champagne in the past half hour, after all—but a blush darkened his face further. “I… I do not know much of… of who she is. But she was very…” Karl trailed off, then blurted out, “We were supposed to spend Christmas together. I hoped…” Karl trailed off again, and sighed. “I was wrong.”

“Hm,” Al said as he made eye contact with one of the waiters who was toting around glasses of champagne. “Sounds disappointing, especially if you’d made specific plans.” The waiter made his way to Al’s side, and Al made another exchange of glasses, making a mental note to keep Karl talking enough that this one would go down slower. It seemed like Karl was a bit of a talkative drunk, at least, so it shouldn’t be hard.

“No, no, had not made specific plans,” Karl was saying as the handoff was made. “Well, not that we talked about. But… was still hoping, you understand?”

“What sort of plans hadn’t you talked about, then?”

Karl sighed. “Was hoping to cook Christmas dinner for Rosemary. And… wanted to buy her present. See her face when she opened it. Wanted… wanted to start tradition. For just two of us.” Karl’s Russian accent had come to the forefront as he talked about the Christmas he’d hoped to have, and Al briefly considered switching over to that language before deciding it would be, perhaps, a little indecorous to make it obvious just how very Russian Karl was, at least here in Goddard central, with the entire company around them.

“You decide what you wanted to get her?” Al asked. Karl was taking a sip of his new glass of champagne, and he glared at Al over the rim of the glass. “Sorry! Just thought I’d ask. I never bother buying her a present because I have no idea what sort of thing she might want.”

Karl seemed to consider this for a moment. “Pens,” he said decisively.

Al raised an eyebrow. “Pens?”

Karl nodded. “Pens. Nice ones. And perhaps, better organization system for those papers in living room.”

Al almost doubled over laughing at that. “Oh, believe me, I’ve tried,” he said when he managed to straighten out, though he was still wheezing a bit with laughter. “Best I’ve been able to do is make sure she gets rid of the ones that are useless on a regular basis.”

“I do not think she considers any of them truly useless,” Karl argued. “Even terrible papers are guide for what not to do, yes?”

Al gave Karl a dubious look. “If you say so. You’re the scientist, not me.”

“She should be scientist. Proper research scientist,” Karl said, vehemently. “Equipment she bought for my lab should have been hers. She would be good enough, for all she says she is not.”

“Rosie hasn’t done research of her own since college,” Al said, mildly, hiding his shock that Karl had come into contact with that particular quirk of Rosie’s personality. “And she’s more valuable to Carter where she is now.”

“Of course,” scoffed Karl. “Valuable, to have woman who always knows what question to ask, to move research along. Valuable, to have woman who can write proposals for half-dozen different disciplines. Valuable, to have her doing other people’s filing, to have her running after Dr. Pryce in middle of night.” Karl took an angry swig of his champagne. “Valuable. Feh.”

Al’s eyebrows had been inching their way slowly up his forehead as Karl ranted, but before he could respond, they were interrupted again.  
  


Karl slipped free of Al’s restraining arm as a pair of scientists who also worked under Rosemary’s supervision—on the same floor as Karl—approached them, greeting Al with smiles on their faces. Karl lifted his champagne glass to his face, expecting to be snubbed by Dr. Weiss and Dr. Falk, as he usually was in social situations, but as Dr. Falk started in on the same sort of flirting banter with Al that Karl had already heard twice before from Sterling and Dr. Messer, Dr. Weiss turned to Karl with a cautiously friendly smile on his face.

“I see you’ve encountered hurricane Al,” Dr. Weiss said in his slight, German-accented voice.

Karl couldn’t help it. He snorted into his champagne glass, then lowered it from his face. “That is a most apt description of the man, it is true.”

Dr. Weiss’s smile widened. “I try to avoid him when I can, myself. He’s too much trouble.”

Karl glanced Al’s direction in time to see the giant shoot an amused look Dr. Weiss’s direction, without ever once losing the patter of his banter with Dr. Falk. “I am getting that impression as well,” Karl said, raising the volume of his voice a bit, making sure Al could hear him.

“He’s mostly harmless, of course, but the man attracts chaos like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Is that so?”

“Hey, now, Eber, that’s not fair at all,” Al said, breaking away from the patter he’d established with Dr. Falk, a broad smile on his face. “I actually do go looking for the chaos. It’s my job to turn it into order, after all.”

“There’s a good deal more chaos in your vicinity at any one time than can be attributed to seeking it out,” Weiss said blandly.

“A man can have hobbies.”

Karl snorted again, as did Falk, and the two of them exchanged an amused look. For the first time, it felt as if he was bonding with his coworkers.

Of course, the absence of Edwina Gao might have as much to do with that as anything. Karl hadn’t seen her at all that evening, and usually she was monopolizing the attention of those around her, herding the other scientists away from Karl. She’d taken an irrational dislike to him in his first few weeks at Goddard, though Karl had never been quite sure why, and had managed to impose her dislike on everyone around her.

Karl didn’t know why she was missing, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He only knew that the door to her lab had been hanging open when he’d come in to work that morning, revealing an empty room. Perhaps Rosemary would know, but she’d been a pillar of frost in their start-of-week check-in, and he hadn’t quite dared to ask.

Al had turned back to Dr. Falk, continuing their banter, but Weiss was still focused on Karl. “Rosemary tells me we’ll be working together for a few months,” he said with a smile.

“Er. Yes. Though I am not sure…”

“What you could possibly assist me with? Oh, all kinds of things, dear boy.” The older man’s face wrinkled in a kind smile. “For one thing, my eyesight is not nearly as good as it once was.” Dr. Weiss tapped his glasses. “There’s only so much assistive devices can do, you know.”

Karl considered the thick lenses on his own face, the fact that he needed to hold papers at a distance sometimes to read nowadays. “I know.”

“Well, just you wait until you’ve been on a space mission or two. You’ll find yourself remembering today’s clarity of vision with a great deal of fondness.”

That was right. The man was a xenobiologist. “You have been on a number of missions yourself?”

Weiss smiled again. “More successful space missions under my belt than any other scientist working at Goddard, though goodness knows one of you young whippersnappers is going to break my record any day now.”

“Not me,” Karl said. “Not yet, at any rate. Have yet to have single space mission.”

“Just you wait,” Weiss said, his smile broadening into a gleeful grin. “Oh, you will love it.”

“Perhaps,” Karl found himself saying. Across the room, he heard Rosemary’s voice, and he grimaced; right now, he would give anything to be lightyears away from her.

It would hurt less.

Weiss caught sight of the grimace, and had opened his mouth, obviously planning to ask about it, but Falk caught him by the arm just then. “Come on, Eber, time for you to take your meds and get to bed,” she said, and Dr. Weiss followed her, grumbling.

Al’s attention switched immediately to Karl, but Karl was caught by the sight of Carter, halfway across the room, leaning towards Rosemary with a leer. As Karl stared, Carter looked his direction, almost deliberately, a little smirk on his face.

Karl bristled, but Al’s arm came down across his shoulders again. “Careful,” Al said in a low tone. “He’s trying to provoke you.”

“Does everyone know what happened, then?” Karl asked bitterly.

Al shook his head. “Nah. But he does. And he wants to make sure you know where Rosie’s place is.”

“That man is half her age.” Karl realized, suddenly, that he was snarling.

Al laughed. “You think that would stop Rosie, if she really wanted to?”

“He is her… her work superior.”

Al shot Karl a look. “Rosie’s yours.”

Karl’s heart sank. “That is different.”

Al shrugged. “He wouldn’t, you know.”

“Then what did you mean, Rosie’s place?” Karl realized he was snarling again, and took a sip of his champagne again. One way or another, the flute was almost empty again.

“They’re her first priority, Dr. Kelley. They’ve got to be. Him and Pryce.” Al tilted his head slightly, and Karl followed the motion only to spot Dr. Pryce, who was watching Carter flirt with Rosemary with a look of satisfaction on her face.

“So, what, Rosemary has no freedom?”

Al laughed. “Oh, Rosie’s free, all right. Free to do whatever she wants with whoever she wants… provided the work she gets done is better than the best, provided the two of them come first.”

“That is not freedom.”

Al shrugged. “Well, it’s what we traded, all of us, for a place at Goddard.” Karl shot Al a sharp look, and Al raised an eyebrow and continued. “Or haven’t you figured that out yet, Dmitri?”

The use of his given name, here, in this space, surrounded by the hum of voices as Goddard’s employees socialized, sent a chill down Karl’s spine.  
  


Rosemary unlocked the door of her apartment and went in, nudging the door shut behind her with her heel and then leaning back against it with a tired sigh as she kicked her heels off one after the other. The evening gown she’d worn to the Christmas party this year always made her look fabulous, but after the first couple of hours the boning in the bodice started to dig in to her body in odd places.

“You could have warned me, Rosie.” Al’s voice echoed down the entry hall from the direction of the living room. Rosemary sighed again, this time exasperated, and padded down the hall to flick the living room light on. Al was stretched full-length on the couch. Well, as full-length as he could manage, which meant he was laying with his head up against one arm of the couch and his stockinged feet propped up on the other one.

“And you could be off pestering someone else, but it looks like neither of us are going to get what we wanted from this evening.” Al rolled his eyes at that, giving the ceiling what Rosemary privately called his “Lord give me strength” look. “The door was locked,” she added accusingly.

“I do have black ops training, Rosie.”

“Yeah, but you usually don’t use it to harass me. So why are you here?”

“Why wouldn’t I be here?”

“Well, you left the party half an hour ago with Dr. Kelley, so I rather expected you’d be in his bed right now. He is your type.”

Al swung his feet off the couch arm and sat up all of a sudden, staring at Rosemary intently. “But not as much as he is your type, apparently.”

Rosemary groaned, and crossed the room to sit on the couch next to him, tucking her legs sideways so she could look his direction. “So you figured that out.”

Al turned towards her and gathered her hands in his, squeezing tightly. “It wasn’t that hard, Miss Rosie. In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never once let someone spend the entire night in your bed.” He paused, considering. “Well, not for sleeping, anyway. And there your Dr. Kelley was, getting drunk and pouring his heart out to me about how he spent three and a half weeks waking up to you at your most congenial, only to have you go frosty one night and start treating him like he was nothing to you.”

Rosemary frowned. “Not like nothing, like he’s a subordinate. Because he is. And that’s how I should have been treating him all along.”

“That won’t do, Rosie. I know you too well.” Al let go of her hands and leaned his forearms on his knees, staring at her sidelong. “You like him, more than anyone you’ve ever been with since I met you. I can tell. So why’d you break it off?”

Rosemary opened her mouth to answer, but instead of words, all that came out was a strangled sob. No tears—God, she’d wanted to cry since the moment she’d kicked Dr. Kelley out of her apartment a week ago, but she hadn’t been able to then and she still couldn’t now. All she could do was make a terrible keening noise, letting her grief out in the only way she was able.

“Oh, Rosie.” Al reached over and pulled her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her and looking down at her with a serious expression on his face. “Rosie, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have pushed you his way if I’d known he was going to upset your balance this much.”

Rosemary curled up in Al’s lap, taking deep breaths and staring up into the far corner of her living room ceiling as she slowly came back to herself. “He didn’t,” she finally forced out. “I just… forgot what was important for a little while.” She blinked rapidly a few times, then turned her face up to Al with her highest wattage smile pasted on her face. “I think we were going to collide eventually anyway. You just sped up the process, is all.”

“And someone noticed your priorities shifting and reported it to Carter, didn’t they.”

“Well. I did need to be reminded of where my loyalties lie,” said Rosemary in a voice that was suddenly tight and bitter. Where did that come from? she wondered. Did she resent what working for Goddard, what working for Carter, for Pryce had turned her in to?

Al’s expression was still serious. “Sometimes I wonder if bringing you to Carter’s attention was the best thing for you,” he said, echoing her thoughts.

Rosemary laughed, managing to turn her voice light and cheerful again. “Well, what the hell else was I going to do with my life, Al? When you met me, I’d been in twelve jobs over the twenty-odd years since I started working. I was always the first one to get cut when budgets got tight or the company got bought out. It didn’t matter if my labs ran smoother or got better results than any of the others. All that mattered was that I was difficult, was that I was uppity, was that I was willing to point out when the lab I was managing wasn’t up to code, or to talk back to the scientists I managed when I knew, goddamnit Al, I knew that the way they were doing things wouldn’t get results. But here, everything’s different. Pryce and Carter care about results, not all the… the fluff.”

“Still. Maybe you’d have had a chance to… to properly be human, without my intervention.”

Rosemary’s laugh was sharper this time. “I was never going to be a proper human being, Al. Might as well be somewhere that’s an advantage.” She looked up at Al with a coy expression on her face. “After all, isn’t that why you’re here?”

Al frowned. “Well, yes, but at least I’ve got the excuse of the Army beating my humanity out of me.”

“And my reasons for setting it aside aren’t good enough to count?”

“Life never gave you the choice to set it aside, now did it. Life took it.” Al went serious again. “Life could have given it back, Rosie.”

“Oh, what good did humanity ever do a person, anyway.” Rosemary leaned her head on Al’s shoulder. “Did you see Dr. Kelley back to his apartment?”

Al pressed a light kiss to Rosemary’s forehead. “Practically carried the man. He turned into a dead weight after the fourth glass of champagne.”

Rosemary winced sympathetically. “Thank goodness the lab is closed tomorrow. He’ll have a hell of a hangover.”

“I forced most of a glass of water down him before I sent him to bed.”

“Thank you.” Rosemary smiled up at Al. “Want to stay for a while?”

Al shook his head. “Nah, Sterling from over in Engineering is expecting me.”

Rosemary slid off his lap and stood there in front of him for a moment. “I’ll leave you to let yourself out, then.”

Al took her hands and squeezed them again, staring up at her. “Just remember that I’m always here if you need me, Rosie. From one person with a deficit of humanity to another.”

Rosemary squeezed Al’s hands back, trying to smile but suspecting that her expression was more sad than anything. “I’ll manage, one way or another. Don’t be a stranger yourself, you hear?”

Al’s smile was just as sad as she suspected her own was. “I hear, Miss Rosie.”


	23. Two and a half years later...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No smut. Lots of hurt. Little comfort.

March 12th, 1993

It was snowing in Florida, and Rosemary was standing at her office window, hands resting on the sill, staring out at the swirling flakes and thinking about the last time it had snowed.

There was a small noise behind her. The darkened sky and bright florescent bulbs in her office turned the window into a mirror outside of the shadow she cast on the glass, and when she glanced up, there he was, reflected in the window, almost like a dream.

“Do you remember the last time it snowed, suka?” he asked in a soft voice, so painfully gentle that she didn't know how to react to it.

So she said his name, and put as much warning into it as she could. “Dr. Kelley.”

“Come and walk in the snow with me, Rosemary. I miss my friend.”

She missed the sound her name made on his tongue, the rolled Rs, the sibilant S. “We both know that I was never your friend,” she said out loud, her tone harsh, her back straight. She tried to look out at the snow again, but her eyes were fixed on his reflection as he left the shadowed doorway of her office and came to stand at the edge of her desk, shutting the door behind himself as he did.

“Well, then, perhaps we can become friends now,” he said. She wished she could see his eyes, but the same florescent bulbs that made her window a mirror had done the same to his glasses, and in the reflection they were bright, shining circles.

He'd gotten them a month ago, switching from the thick black frames she'd chosen for him when he first arrived in this place back to the round wire ones he'd favored before Goddard. The sight of them left Rosemary feeling strangely aware of her mortality, of the fact that she wasn't getting any younger, and that some day she would be gone from this place, along with every single sign that a woman named Rosemary Epps had once worked there.

“You should have gotten bifocals years ago,” she said, instead of some more sensible response. “You've been stealing my spare pair of reading glasses in meetings for at least a year and a half, you know.”

Dr. Kelley’s reflection smiled at that, a small twitch of the lips that was barely perceptible in the reflection. “And then you accidentally left a pair in my lab. Clearly the actions of a woman who has never been my friend.”

“The actions of a lab manager who was tired of you forgetting to go to the eye doctor appointments she set up for you and didn't want you ruining your eyesight from holding everything at arms length and squinting to read,” she muttered irritably.

Dr. Kelley’s smile grew wider, almost into something that would be an actual smile on someone else, and Rosemary felt her heart skip a beat. She watched in terrified anticipation as he came around the arm of her desk that cut her office in two, crossing to stand at her side, setting his hands on the windowsill as well. His right hand lingered next to her left, their pinkies almost brushing, and Rosemary wanted to snatch her hands back against her body, as if she'd been burned. Coward, a little voice in her head said. You are weak, and stupid, and cowardly, Rosemary Abigail Epps, for choosing this path.

Well. She might be, at that. But what was the point of choosing a man like this?

She'd known, from that first meeting where they'd sat down together. She'd made him talk about Decima, about the Koschei Bessmertny virus, as it had been then, and she'd heard it in his voice. This might be a man who would deny having a religion, deny that he believed in a god, but he was a true believer all the same.

He believed he could change the world, change humanity for the better. He believed that every life that was lost in pursuit of his goal was worth it, if it meant a future where no life would be lost in vain ever again. He believed that he would make it work, and then there would be no more death, no more pain, no more suffering.

He believed with such a stony certainty that Rosemary almost believed it herself, despite the way that Decima had proven unexpectedly volatile over the past four years.

And if she made a man like that choose between her and his virus… well.

Never mind the fact that Carter would never let them make that choice. She didn't think it was a choice Dr. Kelley would ever make in her favor to begin with.

“Come and walk in the snow with me,” he said again, his tone almost affectionate, and his pinkie brushed hers, sending a jolt of awareness through every nerve in her body. She steeled herself against it, and against the tears that were suddenly, unexpectedly threatening.

Rosemary took refuge in a fake smile and a falsely cheery tone, hoping he wouldn't notice that she didn't dare look directly at him. “I've wasted enough time staring out my window at it, thank you very much. But if you want to go play in the snow, better make it quick! You know it never lasts long.”

Dr. Kelley sighed. “You never do make it easy, do you, suka?” And then, for a brief moment, he set his right hand on top of her left, squeezing her hand gently in his own. His fingertips were cold, but his palm was warm, and that warmth lingered even after he removed his hand from hers and turned away from her and left her alone in her office once more.

Rosemary heard the door click shut again after he left, and stood there, gripping the windowsill hard as tears poured down her cheeks. She stood there until the sight of Dr. Kelley snapped her out it, as he left the front door of the lab complex in his lab coat and the red scarf and hat she'd given him years ago. She stepped back from the window, but even as she did, he turned to look up at her, and she was certain he had seen her shadow on the glass.

Rosemary returned to her desk and grabbed a tissue, swiping the tears away angrily, grateful that she'd switched to a waterproof eyeliner and mascara years ago.

She imagined him standing there in the snow for a few minutes longer, watching her window, hoping that he would see the lights in her office go dark, hoping that she would join him.

But she didn't dare go look out the window again to find out if she was right.


	24. What happens in Waco...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An incomplete snippet. No smut, lots of Pining.

April 6th, 1993

“What are you doing here? You should be packing for Texas.” The jarring tones of Rosemary at her most strident cut through Karl’s concentration, and he lifted his head from the microscope, glaring across the lab at her.

“Texas?”

Rosemary rolled her eyes. “Yes, Texas. You got the memo yesterday. Or didn’t you read it?” She disappeared into his office, emerging a few minutes later with a sealed envelope that Karl had found pinned to his door the day before and had just chucked on his desk without opening. “You really need to start reading these things.”

Karl turned back to his microscope. “Why? You always make sure I know what is in them.”

He heard a loud sigh from Rosemary, and the tap of her heels… and then she thwacked him upside the head with the envelope.

“Ow.” He lifted his head to glare at her again.

“I know that didn't hurt. Now put that slide away and read your damn memo. Plane for Texas leaves in three hours.” Rosemary handed the envelope over and then whirled around, heading towards the door to his lab.

“Why am I going to Texas?” Karl asked as he slit the envelope open.

“Pack for warm and dry.”

“No, really, why Texas?” Karl scanned the memo, but all the information it had was that he was doing some field work in Texas, a command to pack for a week, and a flight time.

“Do you have a Stetson?” was Rosemary’s only response.

“What is a Stetson?”

“We should buy you a Stetson.”

“Why are you like this?”

Rosemary paused in the doorway to Karl’s lab and shot him one of her blinding smiles. “I've had eight in-person meetings with Carter over the past 36 hours, setting this whole thing up.”

Karl let out a little bark of laughter, feeling a surge of affection for Rosemary despite the fact that he knew it was a terrible idea to feel anything of the sort for the ridiculous woman. “Not the question I hoped you would answer…”

“But it explains everything?” Rosemary’s expression went stern. “Now go get packed. And remember to read your goddamn memos!” And then she was through the door of his lab and gone.

Rosemary grabbed Sterling Jenkins by the elbow before he entered the plane compartment that the rest of the Goddard staff on this Texas trip were waiting in. Barring Dr. Pryce, of course—she had her own compartment.

“Jenkins. A word before we take off.”

“I gathered as much,” he said, raising his eyebrows questioningly. “Well?”

“I want you to keep an eye on Kelley for me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” Rosemary bit her lower lip. “Last time he was on a plane was just after he was brought on board by Carter. And he’s a covert recruit.”

He winced sympathetically. “I see.”

“I’m sure you do. Just… make sure he’s okay? It’s not that long of a flight, but just in case…”

Sterling patted Rosemary on the shoulder. “I’ll keep him safe from his own mind, Rosie.”

“Thank you.”

Rosemary waited until the plane was at cruising altitude before joining the scientists herself. Her eyes went immediately to Dr. Kelley, who had a white-knuckled grip on the armrests of the plush seat he was in, but his gaze was fixed on Sterling, who seemed to be doing a good job of distracting him.

She didn’t quite sigh with relief at the sight, but she was definitely tempted to.

“All right. If I can have your attention…”

The murmur of conversation died down, and all four of the people in the compartment turned their attention to Rosemary.

“I don’t know how much attention you all have been paying to national news as of late, but if you have, you’ve probably heard about the standoff between the FBI and that cult down in Waco.”

Abbott and Jenkins both gave her sharp looks. Well, they’d both been on little trips like this one before. Li had a look of mild interest on her face. Dr. Kelley just looked confused.

“Our job is to do what we can to assist them with a peaceful resolution to this standoff. And if peace is not possible, we’re aiming for a low-casualty resolution. Abbott, Jenkins, you’ve both dealt with situations like this before, so you’ve got a pretty good idea of what we’re headed into, but before I continue on to the rest of the briefing packet, does anyone have any questions?”

Li shook her head, but Dr. Kelley had a deep frown between his eyebrows and creasing the corners of his mouth. He cleared his throat once and tried to speak, and then cleared his throat again when no sound came out. “I do not understand why I am here,” he managed to get out in a hoarse, tight voice.

“Three reasons,” Rosemary said, counting them off on her fingers. “One, you’ve got the clearance level to know about these little deals that Goddard makes with the government. Two, you’re our biochem scientist with the most varied base of knowledge. Three…” she paused, and met Dr. Kelley’s eye. His frown deepened. “Three, we resolve this peacefully, the government agents on site are more than willing to look away if a prisoner or five goes… missing, shall we say, before transportation to a detention center. Might as well give you the opportunity to choose your own samples, as it were.”

Dr. Kelley’s eyes went wide. “I see.”

“I’m sure you do,” Rosemary said drily. “Any other questions?”

There was no response, so she began the rest of her briefing. “Right, I’m sure you all know Al Bennett. Well, he and his team have been on site for the past two days getting everything ready for us…”

Karl fixed his eyes on Rosemary and tried to remember to breathe. He hadn’t expected to react like this; after all, he’d been in plenty of enclosed spaces since… well, since that last, fateful plane flight that had brought him to Goddard.

But he had not been on a plane. And there was something about it—the smell of the air, perhaps, or the change in pressure—that left him feeling raw and exposed, his nerves jangling.

Sterling’s hand came down on his arm, and Karl tried to bring his attention back to what Rosemary was saying.

She seemed to be wrapping up her briefing. “So that’s where you lot come in. Now, with luck, we’ll be out of here within a week, but if not…” Rosemary shrugged. “In any case, here’s a map of the surrounding area and the complex—” she pressed a button on the wall and the map appeared there, “so you four should have some proposals ready by the time we land.” And then, Rosemary left the compartment, shooting a general “Good luck!” over her shoulder as she went.

“Right,” Sterling said, taking command of the room. “Karl, Caro, the two of you sit down and have a little chat about chemical agents that can subdue without harm. Elizabeth, you and I can talk delivery methods—ah. Dr. Pryce.”

The door to the compartment had opened, revealing the notorious scientist. “Carry on,” she said, sounding bored. And then she settled herself in a corner with a pad of paper and appeared to be ignoring them all.


	25. ...stays in Waco, except for the human test subjects you now have

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-Waco road trip, smut and emotional hurting

April 19th, 1993

“Well, that’s that taken care of,” Rosemary said, dusting her hands off theatrically. “All set with restraining bolts and everything. They’ll be heading out on the plane with you lot tomorrow, and medical assures me the complete workups will be ready by next Monday, all nice and ready for experimentation.”

“‘You lot?’” asked Al, raising an eyebrow.

Rosemary nodded across the room at Miranda. “I normally do one of my tours of our suppliers down south about now. Dr. Pryce thought it was best I get it out of the way, since Charles isn’t fit to do them by himself and doesn’t have the clearance to know about the human trials.” Rosemary clapped her hands together and smiled at the group of scientists and technicians in the room. “Granted, since Charles isn’t here, I could use a second person in the car to keep me from falling asleep behind the wheel. Who wants to come ride shotgun for me? Sterling?”

The engineer shook his head. “Oh, no. I’ve seen the way you drive. I refuse to be party to that sort of vehicular abuse.”

“Abbott? Li?” Both scientists gave her horrified looks. “No, I suppose not. Al?”

“Now, darlin’, you know the car that’s comfortable for both of us hasn’t been invented yet. I’d rather not spend the next three days cramped into a seat half the size I need, thank you very much.”

Rosemary frowned. That left Miranda and Dr. Kelley, and since she didn’t dare ask Miranda… “Dr. Kelley?”

Dr. Kelley shot a confused, cautious look her way. “My samples are with the medical team. I suppose I am not needed until the workups are done. I could go with you, if you truly need a second person in the car.”

Rosemary tried to keep her face still and calm. Spending the better part of a week in a car with Dr. Kelley wouldn’t be her first choice, but between that and making the drive alone, she preferred having him along. Just barely. “You’ll do, I suppose. Pack an overnight bag and send everything else back with the equipment. Four nights, maybe five. We’ll be back to Goddard Saturday or Sunday.”

Dr. Kelley nodded and left the room, probably off to his bedroom in the big house they’d all been living in over the past two weeks to get packed. After a minute or two Rosemary did the same, trying to ignore the fact that Al was dogging her footsteps. He followed her into her room and shut the door behind him, leaning on it.

“I take it you want a word?” Rosemary asked, irritable. She didn’t like the situation she was about to find herself in, and she had a feeling that Al was about to offer some of his unwanted advice.

“Yeah. Run away with him, Rosie,” Al said, his voice sounding strangely harsh.

Rosemary blinked in surprise, then burst into laughter. Al watched her silently as she doubled over laughing, then straightened up and wiped tears out of her eyes. “Oh, god, I needed that. Your sense of humor is, as always, impeccable, Al.”

He was still staring gravely at her. “I’m being serious, Rosie. Run away with him.”

All the amusement drained out of Rosemary in an instant, leaving her cold. “That’s ridiculous,” she said, turning to the closet in the room and starting to pull her clothing out of it. “I… where would we even go? Assuming he’d go along with it, which he wouldn’t, because the latest set of human trials for Decima start just as soon as those cultists clear medical.”

“And you’re saying he loves that virus more than he loves you?”

Rosemary snorted. “He doesn’t love me. I’m not sure he even likes me any more. But even if he did…” She set a pile of blouses on the bed and turned to look at Al. “Even if he did, that virus is his life. He thinks he can change the world with it, Al. No, he knows he can change the world with it. He’s a man with a cause, and that cause is more important to him than any other thing in this world. I’m sure you can understand that.”

Al shut his eyes and sighed. “Yeah. Yeah I can.”

“And anyway, I have better taste than that. If I’m going to run away with someone, I want it to be someone gorgeous and not too bright, so I can run roughshod over them,” Rosemary said with a false sort of cheer, going back to the closet to pull out a pile of suits.

“Rosie, you haven’t let me in your bed since you ended it with him.”

Rosemary froze with her hand on a hanger. “I’ve been busy with other people, is all,” she said, trying to keep her voice cheerfully neutral.

“Busy with your vibrator, you mean.”

“Al…”

“It’s been more than two years. When are you going to admit that you’re stuck on him?”

“I’m not stuck on him, Al, I just… I haven’t had time to meet anyone new, is all. And I’d much rather spend time talking with you these days than having sex with you,” Rosemary said, dumping her suits on the bed and swiping at her cheeks again, getting rid of the tears that were suddenly leaking out. Oh, why now? Not in front of Al, she begged her body, but her body wasn’t listening.

Al’s arms folded around her from behind, and he pulled her back against his chest, enveloping her in a warm, close hug. “Oh, darlin’. My darlin’ Rosie,” he murmured as he held her. “When’re you going to realize you can’t run from this forever?”

“I’ve just got to keep running as long as I can and hope my legs don’t collapse under me,” Rosemary said, starting to sob. “I can’t have him, Al. I want him and I can’t have him.”

“I know, darlin’,” Al said, kissing the top of her head.

  
April 20th, 1993

“Look me up in the company directory when we get back,” Sterling said in passing, on his way back from stowing his luggage in the rental car that would take him, Abbott, and Li to the airstrip where Goddard’s plane was waiting.

“Look you up?” Karl frowned.

Sterling paused and smiled. “Or I can look you up. If you’d like.”

“I…” Karl tried to figure out what he wanted to say. He liked the engineer, certainly. The man was friendly, and had kept Karl from breaking into a screaming fit on the plane during their trip to Waco.

“Just for drinks, or dinner. In the cafeteria, if need be,” Sterling said in a coaxing tone. “I’d like to get to know you a little better, is all.”

Karl smiled in spite of his caution. He’d found over the years that he couldn’t count on friendly, not here, not at Goddard… but he supposed that didn’t mean he needed to be lonely forever. “Very well. I will look you up.”

“Hey, Sterling, mind if I borrow Karl here for a bit? He needs a security briefing before he heads out with Rosie.” Al’s hand came down on Karl’s shoulder from behind, and Karl jumped. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” Al said, coming up around to his side. “In here?” He gestured to one of the empty bedrooms nearby.

“I need security briefing to ride in car with Rosemary for three days?” Karl asked, following Al into the room. Al looked up and down the hall, then shut the door tight behind them.

“Nah, just wanted a moment alone,” Al said.

Karl frowned. “What for?”

Al herded Karl to the center of the room, leaning in close. “Somethin’ I need to tell you,” he said in a low, careful voice. “But you promise me first not to yell.”

“I promise,” Karl said, raising an eyebrow.

“Fine, then.” Al cleared his throat. “Run away with her.”

Karl let out a snort of laughter. Al frowned.

“I’m serious. You go get in that car with Rosie and you convince her to run as far away from here as possible.”

“Ah, yes, run away with woman who has taken every opportunity to hurt me, that makes sense.” Karl swallowed. His voice had come out harsh and bitter, but the truth was… the truth was he hadn’t meant it that way. “She wouldn’t go with me,” he said to Al. “And I…” He thought of the line of prisoners that had been fitted with restraining bolts the day before, of the Decima samples waiting back in medical for them. “I am so close, Al. Perhaps not this attempt, but the next. And I am the only one who can do this, do you understand?” He gave Al an intent look, trying to get his meaning across.

Al simply sighed and shook his head. “Damn. I hate when that woman is right. She’s insufferable when she’s right.”

“What woman?”

“Who do you think?”

“Rosemary.” Karl paused and considered what Al had said. “You… you told Rosemary to run away with me? What did she say?”

“More or less what you just said,” came Al’s response. The other man sounded tired. “Ah, well. Maybe it’s too late for her. Maybe it’s too late for the both of you.” He clapped Karl on the shoulder, and before Karl could react, Al was out the door of the room they’d been talking in.

And despite trying, Karl did not manage to get Al alone again before he left, driving the car that carried Pryce.  
  


“I’m sorry, but we’ve only got one room left.” The woman behind the desk gave Rosemary an apologetic look. “It is a double queen, though.“ 

Rosemary sagged a bit, and looked at Dr. Kelley. "I could probably get to the next hotel on our route." 

Dr. Kelley scoffed at that. "You are exhausted, Rosie. If you will not let me drive, then at least stop before you driving becomes dangerous." 

"It’s not that I don’t trust you to get us where we’re going, it’s just that the last time you drove was five years ago and in another country,” Rosemary shot back in an irritated tone of voice. 

"You prove my point. You only snap when you are exhausted.” Dr. Kelley switched to a coaxing tone of voice. “Come now, Rosie, I do not bite. Surely we can share a room for one night.”

Rosemary sighed and turned back to the desk clerk, who had been watching this interplay with no small amount of fascination. I wonder what she thinks we are to one another, Rosemary found herself thinking. Hell, I wish I knew myself.“Fine,” she said out loud. “We’ll take the room.” She pulled a credit card out of her purse and handed it to the clerk, and in short order they were in possession of a room number and two key cards. 

Rosemary turned to go back out to the car to grab her bag, but Dr. Kelley captured her by the shoulders and deposited her in one of the lobby chairs instead. “Keys,” he ordered, and she was so tired she handed them over without a thought. “Will be back with bags in moment. You rest. Doctor’s orders." 

Rosemary offered up a weak laugh at that, and slumped back into the chair, shutting her eyes. She must have dozed off; she woke up to Dr. Kelley shaking her gently by the shoulder, an amused expression on his face. 

"You fell asleep, Rosie,” he said, an almost-smile turning the corners of his mouth upwards, and he offered her a hand. “You were snoring." 

“What a filthy habit. I shall have to break myself of it.” Rosemary took his hand and hauled herself back to her feet, feeling old and stiff and sore. 

“Sleeping or snoring?“ asked Dr. Kelley, handing her overnight bag over and then gesturing the way towards the elevator. 

“Both, really.” They waited silently for the elevator. Once the elevator doors closed behind them, Rosemary shot Dr. Kelley a coy look. “I’m impressed you uttered that roaring falsehood about biting without blushing. I seem to recall you being very enthusiastic in that regard." 

At that, Dr. Kelley did blush, and gave her a look that was suddenly heated. "Would not have been tempted to bite if you had been kissing me instead. But you do not kiss.” He shrugged. “So temptation to use mouth for other activities was irresistible.” He glanced sideways at her, his expression strange and searching, and added in a hesitant tone, “I am surprised you remember. You seemed very intent on, ah, making it clear that nothing had… had happened between us.”

“Well, I never claimed we didn’t have sex.” The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open again to the floor their room was on. Rosemary made her way silently down the hall, followed at a respectful distance by Dr. Kelley.   
  


Karl hoped briefly that Rosemary would revisit the fascinating fragment of a conversation they’d been having in the elevator once they were safely behind closed doors again, but the sight of Rosemary kicking her shoes off and practically collapsing on the nearest bed, fully clothed, drove the thought out of his mind. Blyad, she really was exhausted. She was moving like she was feeling her actual age for once, and that worried him.

He grabbed her hands and pulled her back upright, and she groaned and shot him a glare. “What?”

“You will feel much better in morning if you take time to shower and scrape all that off your face,” he said, gesturing at her makeup. “Also you will ruin your wig.”

“This is my driving wig,” she said primly. “It can stand a little battering.” But she still sat up a bit straighter, stretching her spine out and causing a few loud cracks. “Jesus, driving is hell on my back. Fine. A hot shower sounds good. But if I take more than ten minutes, I’ve probably fallen asleep in there.”

“I will be sure to come in and wake you.”

Rosemary’s expression went sultry under all the exhaustion, and his breath caught in his throat. She hadn’t looked at him like that in years. “Is that a promise or a threat?” Her voice was low and raspy and utterly enthralling.

Somehow he managed to force out a “Whichever you want it to be,” and Rosemary smirked at him.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine without assistance,” she said, gathering up her overnight bag and heading towards the bathroom, “but it’s so good to know you’re there to come to my… rescue.” The last word was drawn out and full of unspoken meaning, and it hung in the air like a promise long after she’d shut the bathroom door behind her.

Karl dropped his own overnight bag to the bed and sat on the edge with a sigh. He’d volunteered to drive back to Goddard with Rosie because no one else had—and having been in the car with her for fourteen hours of heavy traffic that day, he couldn’t blame the the other scientists for turning her down, the woman drove like a maniac—but he hadn’t expected the… the closeness that arose between them during the drive. Once he’d gotten over his initial disappointment when the fragile relationship they’d been building for those three short weeks had fallen apart, she’d gone back to treating him the way she treated all the rest of her scientists, with gentle teasing and firm support and the occasional thunderous order from on high. But the Rosemary who had been in the car with him was not the same Rosemary he’d seen in the labs every day for the past two years and a bit. Their banter had slipped from sharp and impersonal to very personal indeed, from workplace disagreements to almost domestic arguments about which radio station they ought to listen to.

Oh, blyad, he had missed that Rosemary, more than he had realized.

Rosemary interrupted his thoughts by emerging from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, wearing something very similar the ratty old bra and shorts he remembered so fondly from his time in her bed. “No rescue required,” she said with a smile. “And I feel much better. Still planning to pass out the second I’m in a bed, but much better.”

Karl realized he was staring and averted his eyes awkwardly, scooping his bag back up and standing with it clutched to his chest. “Yes, well. I think I will, uh,” he gestured towards the bathroom door. “Follow your example,” he finished after an absurdly long pause. He risked a glance at Rosemary’s face and was startled to find the expression there was almost affectionate.

“Go on then,” she said, still smiling, though her eyes and the corners of her mouth were sagging with exhaustion. “Go get cleaned up. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

He almost smiled back at the echo of his own words and scuttled in to the bathroom, torn between the hope that she really would pass out and get the rest she so obviously needed, and the hope that perhaps… Would he want to go back to her, if she offered herself to him? He didn’t know.

His shower was quick, just long enough to remove the sweat and dust of the day from his body. The rental car did not exactly have a fully functioning air conditioning unit, and they’d alternated between freezing, roasting, and being just barely at an acceptable temperature with the windows down. It would have been miserable enough even without the hours of stop-and-go traffic they’d encountered. No wonder Rosemary was exhausted.

When he emerged from the bathroom in his own cloud of steam, he found that Rosemary had, as she’d predicted, passed out immediately. She was curled up on the far side of the bed furthest from the bathroom door, her back facing him, her breathing slow and even with the faintest whispery hint of a snore.

Blyad, he’d even missed her snoring.

He dropped his overnight bag to the ground next to the other bed, then froze, looking over at Rosemary’s bed with a frown. The sheets had been pulled back on the side of her bed that was closest to him, folded down from the corner in a way that almost looked like an invitation.

His breath caught in his throat again.

He couldn’t quite resist. He took the implied invitation, and climbed in to the bed beside her, curling his body around hers, wrapping an arm around her waist and burying his face against the back of her neck, taking a deep, shaky breath. She smelled like the cheap hotel soap and like the cinnamon of her toothpaste and like something that was wholly her, and she murmured something in her sleep and shifted back against him.

Karl drifted off to sleep feeling, for the first time in years, like he belonged somewhere.  
  


April 21st, 1993

Rosemary woke in the early hours of the morning and frowned at the heavy weight of Dr. Kelley’s arm across her middle. Had she…? Yes, she remembered suddenly, she had pulled the covers back for him. And he’d obviously taken her up on the invitation, because he was curled up around her, his knees tucked in behind her own, his cheek pressed against her shoulder, and what she suspected was morning wood poking her in ass. She stretched carefully, and he moved with her, his arm tightening around her middle.

“Good morning,” he murmured against her neck.

“Good morning.”

“Did I get it right?” He nuzzled behind her ear, slowly, lazily, and she shivered, her thoughts going soft and fuzzy.

“Get it right?”

“Was it an invitation?” he asked, pointedly.

“Oh.” Rosemary sighed. “Yes. Though I’m not sure it’s one I made in my right mind.”

He froze, and pulled back from her a bit. “Ah. That is… a pity.”

He started to lift his arm from her body, but Rosemary brought her own arm down on top of his and snuggled back against him again. He let out a sigh and pressed a kiss to the back of her neck.

“So,” he said, pausing to press a kiss to her shoulder. “Why was there an invitation?”

Rosemary bit her lower lip, hard, the pain breaking through the haze of lust the rest of her body wanted to lose itself in. “I can’t… when I’m at Goddard, I belong to Carter. To Pryce. The two of them, the company, all of that has to be my first priority.”

Dr. Kelley—no, she couldn’t keep calling him that while he was pressed so close to her—Karl went back to nuzzling her ear, murmuring “Al did mention something along those lines, back then. But did that have to mean that you could not have me as well?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “Because for the first time in a very long time, I wanted more.” She shifted, rolling a bit so she could look over her shoulder and look him in the eye. “I couldn’t give you that. I still can’t. But here, away from that place, for just for a little while, I can… I can pretend.”

Karl stared at her for a long, quiet moment, his brow furrowed by a frown. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, then closed it and shook his head.

“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” said Rosemary, covering his hand on her stomach with her own and squeezing it gently. “For what I said back then, when I ended it. For… for hurting you.”

“Oh, suka.” He pressed more kisses to her ear, to her cheek. “It was not the first time you had hurt me. I do not think it will be the last.”

Rosemary frowned. “So why are you here, then?”

“Because I wanted you,” he growled, nibbling her earlobe. “And right now I do not care if I get hurt in the process.” He ground his cock against her hip and Rosemary’s breath caught in her throat with a gasp.

“I didn’t think this through,” she groaned, turning the rest of the way towards him and throwing her leg over his hip, nuzzling at the base of his throat. “I don’t have condoms.”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Well. It is not as if pregnancy is a concern at your age. And I am clean.”

“Can someone who works with viruses ever be considered clean?” Karl glared at her and she let out a weak laugh. “Sorry. Bad attempt at a joke. I’m clean too. But that’s not why I always insist on a condom.”

“Well. There is plenty we can do that would not require one.”

She shook her head. “No, I want to, it’s just…” Tell him, Rosemary. You can tell him. “There was a man. An older one. When I was very young. I thought… I thought I loved him. And he…” Rosemary ground to a halt, her jaw clenching.

He studied her face again, the frown back in place. “How young?”

“Twenty. Nineteen, when it started.”

“You were a child.” His frown deepened, and he rubbed her back gently, comfortingly. “How much older?”

“He was forty-six.”

Karl let out an inventive string of curses in Russian, adding a growled “Men like that should be shot,“ in response to Rosemary’s startled expression.

"Well. He was. Or rather, he shot himself.” Rosemary looked away, not able to meet Karl’s eye. “Shortly after I joined Goddard, it came out that I wasn’t the first young woman he’d… he’d stolen research from. Or seduced. He went from being a well-respected professor emeritus to having no professional reputation to speak of, practically overnight. And he committed suicide.” She looked up at him, finally, and could not read the expression on his face. “So you can see some of what I owe Car—what I owe the company. That is not the whole of my debt to Goddard, but even if it were… they won the right to my loyalty, my… my fealty a long time before I ever met you.”

He stared silently at her, still rubbing his hand in small circles on her back. Finally he spoke. “Tell me if I attempt anything you do not wish to do,” he said, his voice grave, before leaning close to nibble at the juncture where her shoulder met her neck.

Rosemary shut her eyes and relaxed against him, willing herself to trust this man.

Karl felt Rosemary’s relaxation, her surrender to him, and felt a sudden surge of pride, that this prickly woman would entrust herself to him so easily, coupled with just as strong a surge of protectiveness. She had said that the man who had once hurt her was dead, but if he had still existed, out there in the world, Karl would have wanted to find him and strangle him with his bare hands, no matter that the man would have to be ancient now, given Rosemary’s own age.

Rosemary had not said so, but Karl suspected that this had something to do with the scar on Rosemary’s stomach, with the son who existed and who Rosemary had no contact with. He had wondered, from time to time. She simply seemed so alone, and he had wondered what had made her choose to be so.

A child who only reminded her of a man who had coerced her into loving him, into having unprotected sex with him… well. Karl could understand such an abandonment.

Karl nipped the skin of her neck once more, getting a soft little exhale out of Rosemary, then moved down to press kisses to her shoulder, then down further, finding her nipple through the fabric of the thin top she was wearing. Rosemary let out a moan as his lips closed around her nipple, as his tongue manipulated it through the fabric, and she arched backwards. Karl clung to her waist with both hands, keeping her close. He slid his leg between hers and pulled her harder against him, and she let out a little pleased murmur and ground against him.

Rosemary’s fingers stroked little patterns across his scalp, along the curves of his ears, down his neck and shoulders. “Oh, I’ve missed you,” she said softly.

He felt a little glow of pleasure at that. “I’ve missed you too,” he murmured against her chest, before finding her other nipple and treating it as he had the first. She whimpered and clung to him.

He would make this good for her.

He had no other choice.

April 22nd-25th 1993

After that first night on the road, Karl and Rosemary stopped any pretense that they were not sleeping together. The second night, their room had only one bed, and the instant the door was closed behind them they both tossed their luggage aside and were on each other in an instant.

Rosemary had, as she told Karl later, spent a good chunk of the day wrecking havoc in the offices of a couple of nearby chemical manufactories, apparently reminding the owners of exactly how much clout Goddard had and under what circumstances Goddard was willing to bring it to bear. Karl, on the other hand, had spent most of the day parked in a cafe, drinking coffee and making notes about how to move forward with the upcoming Decima trials.

He’d offered to take time out of his day to go purchase condoms, but Rosemary only bit her lower lip and shook her head when he mentioned it. “Lube, though,” she’d added after a moment of contemplation. “I’d hate to lose out on a night with you because my own body doesn’t want to cooperate.”

His mouth had gone dry at that, and he nodded.

She’d kissed him, that second night. It hadn’t been much of a kiss; she’d held his head steady between her hands and leaned in close and just barely brushed her lips against his. But when he considered that she had not kissed him once on the mouth in the whole of the three and a half weeks they’d spent together back at the end of 1990, it felt like a triumph.

Rosemary asked the next day if he wanted to go along with her, to see her work, and out of curiosity he said yes. Most of the visits they did were routine, simply checking in on companies Goddard had long-standing contracts with, but one of today’s suppliers had been underestimating delivery times and costs on the proposals they sent Goddard’s way, only to hit Goddard with high bills and unpardonable wait times.

Karl had heard the phrase “like a terrier among rats” used before to describe a person, but he’d never quite understood it until he saw Rosemary at work.

The third night, Rosemary practiced kissing with him again, pressing light, fluttery kisses to his lips again and again. He asked if she wanted him to help, but she shook her head. “I need to take this at my own pace, Karl,” she’d said. “It’s been more than forty years.”

He sighed at that, and let her keep practicing, and somehow her unpracticed, hesitant kisses were still enough to drive him wild.

The next day was just as full of visits as the previous two had been, only Karl asked to go along with Rosemary this time, wanting to see her in action again. She was a thing of glory, storming in to offices, leaving their occupants stunned and silent and completely bent to her will, and though he’d never considered that he might have a kink for domineering women… well, his reaction to watching Rosemary work her magic had him considering such a thing for the first time.

But by the end of the day, she was as exhausted as she’d been that first night on the road, so instead of asking her to work her magic on him, Karl took care of her, ordering room service while she showered and then, once they’d eaten, cuddling her close in bed, rubbing her neck and shoulders gently until she fell asleep in his arms.

The day after that was a Saturday, and Rosemary had finished all the visits she needed to do on this trip. There was only the drive back to Canaveral, but by unspoken mutual assent they stopped far before they needed to that night.

They hardly slept that night, every touch desperate, Karl hideously aware of the fact that this would all end the next day, that this might be the last time Rosemary would let him touch her like this, that the gentle, careful kisses she was pressing to his mouth now might be the most he’d ever get from her. He kept telling himself he would not accept this, he didn’t have to accept this, there had to be some way, but the words wouldn’t come.

Finally, late in the morning, when they were both packing their overnight bags back up, Karl set his aside and wrapped his arms around Rosemary’s shoulders from behind, pressing a kiss behind her ear.

“Let me care for you,” he said, quietly. “I know you cannot risk caring for me, but please, Rosemary, let me care for you.”

Rosemary took a deep, shaky breath, and he regretted his choice of approach, regretted not being able to see her face. “Don’t,” she said finally, reaching up and pulling his arms away from her shoulders.

“Rosemary…” Karl let his arms drop to his sides, but he stayed behind her, leaned his cheek against the back of her head.

“Dmitri, I cannot even risk that. So don’t.” She took another deep breath, this one steadier. “And it’s not something you can risk either.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Rosemary shoved her overnight bag closer to the center of the bed, and turned, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Sit.”

Karl sat, angling himself towards her, and she turned towards him as well, taking his hands in her own.

“You’ve forgotten what your contract says, haven’t you?” she said, looking him in the eye.

Karl frowned. “I do not understand why that is relevant.”

“‘Any discoveries you make while under our employ will be the property of Goddard Futuristics in perpetuity,’” Rosemary quoted. “How many different versions of Decima have you created over the past four years, Dmitri? How many new mutations have you induced?”

Karl took an unsteady breath. “That is not… that cannot be how they mean to apply it,” he said.

Rosemary raised an eyebrow. “I find that there’s very little Carter will not do when he’s displeased with someone,” she said, her voice calm. “And his tools behaving in ways that make them less efficient at the jobs he needs them to do… well. That definitely earns his ire.”

“So what are you saying, that he would, what, give Decima to someone else, if I chose to care for you? He would lose years of progress.”

“But he’d make sure whoever got it would have no other distractions, no attachments that might turn their head from the work at hand.” Rosemary sighed. “Back then, after Carter had his talk with me, I went to look at the productivity statistics for your lab. You were even more distracted than I was, Dmitri.” Rosemary squeezed his hands gently in her own. “If you had to choose between me and Decima, which would you choose?”

Karl looked away, not able to meet her eye. “Do not ask me to make that choice.”

“You were making that choice every day you chose to leave your lab early to be with me. And the option you were choosing was the one you would not be able to bear, not in the end.” Rosemary clung to his hands as if they were a lifeline. “You are not a selfish man, Dmitri Vologin. You believe you can change the world, and I know that you would set aside every personal connection if that was what it took to make Decima work. But you were choosing me. So I decided to take that option off the table.” Rosemary’s voice broke at that, and Karl looked up at her again. She was crying, and looking at him as if he were infinitely precious to her.

“You were protecting me,” he said, his voice a low rasp.

“Yes.” She took a shaky breath, and the tears slowed. “The only way I know how. So don’t you dare risk it, Dmitri Vologin. Don’t you dare care about me. Because we’ve both given up too much already for me to accept that from you.” Another shaky breath, and the tears stopped. “Find someone else to play with, if it will make life more bearable. But don’t you ever let it go beyond that, you understand?”

Karl pulled his hands out of hers and looked away again, staring at the floor. After a long, quiet moment he took a shaky breath of his own and said “I understand.”

The drive back to Canaveral was short, and they made it in a chilly sort of silence, neither of them bothering with the radio, with even the sharp, impersonal banter they’d started this road trip with. In the parking lot outside the apartment building, they unloaded their luggage, then walked into the building together, parting ways at the end of the hall with nothing but silent nods, the impersonal interactions of coworkers who were nothing more than distant acquaintances outside of work.

Under it all, Karl felt cold, frozen, shattered.

He wondered if he would ever really feel warm again.


	26. And let’s skip another two years, almost like I was writing this out of order and in chunks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut and lots of emotional pain

March 24th-25th, 1990

It was nearly midnight, and Karl was wandering Goddard’s campus aimlessly. The coming morning would bring with it the launch of his first space mission, the start of testing Decima outside the confines of Earth’s gravity, atmosphere, star… The next two and a half years of his life could bring massive leaps forward in his research, and he couldn’t help but be excited about it. True, human trials on Earth had not been the most… successful. But the types of radiation he had access to on Earth were limited, could only push the virus’s mutation so far, and out there among the stars… there were so many options. So many new things to try.

So Karl wandered Goddard’s campus aimlessly, too wound up to sleep even though he knew he should.

He’d said his goodbyes, to the other scientists in his group, who had become, if not quite friends, then at least close acquaintances over the past few years. To Sterling, who had kissed Karl on the lips and had said “It’s been fun, while it lasted.” To everyone.

Well. Everyone except for Rosemary.

It was strange. He’d been able to talk to her about every aspect of moving his research to space. She had grilled him on the various contingencies he’d put in place for one result or another, and had a few half-dozen of her own to suggest. She’d checked and re-checked and triple-checked the packing list with him, making sure he’d have everything he needed for at least the two years he’d be on the station, and a little extra besides. He didn’t know what favors she’d had to pull in to make it work; weight allowances were limited, even for the scientists Goddard sent up, but somehow he had just a little bit extra space, just a little bit extra weight to carry into space with him.

But not once had they spoken about anything other than work. The few times he’d tried, the words had caught in his throat. What did he say to Rosemary? It wasn’t as if he owed her anything, not really. Any chance of that had died, first more than four years ago and again a couple of years back, during that strange trip he’d taken with her, that strange world away from the world they’d inhabited together for just a few short days.

But still… but still. She was there, in his mind, a constant presence he could not rid himself of.

And his apartment was even more empty than before, all his personal belongings in storage, just what had come with the apartment remaining, ready to be passed on to its next inhabitant.

He didn’t like the idea of someone else living next to Rosemary, and he knew he had no right to dislike the idea, but that didn’t stop his mind from resenting the fact that someone else would live where he’d lived for the past six years. That someone else would hear her.

Not that there’d been much to hear lately. Perhaps she was becoming more circumspect, or perhaps she was just slowing down with age, or perhaps she didn’t have someone to… to keep her company at night.

Perhaps she was as lonely as he was currently feeling, and that thought brought him to her door.

Karl stood at Rosemary’s door, trying to decide whether to knock. He hadn’t been able to spot any lights in her apartment from the parking lot, and he didn’t want to wake her if he could avoid it, but he wanted, oh, he wanted, and some part of him needed to know if she was wanting him too. If somewhere under the professional relationship they’d maintained, there was still the Rosemary who had said that he was the first time she’d wanted more in years, and then had pushed him away, again and again, until it had finally taken.

Well, not entirely. He was still standing here outside her door, drawn by something he could not name.

He was still standing there, still trying to decide whether to knock, when the knob of Rosemary’s door turned from the other side and the door swung open with a click. Karl stared, startled, at an equally startled Al, who was standing in the doorway fully dressed, except for the gigantic suit jacket slung over one shoulder.

Al recovered first. “So she told you too?”

Karl frowned. “Told me…?”

Al studied Karl’s face. “No, I suppose not. You launch tomorrow, don’t you.”

Karl nodded. “Yes.”

Al studied Karl a bit more, then let out a sigh. “Normally I wouldn’t do something like this, you know. But I think she needs the company tonight, and I can’t stay. Too much to get on with.” He stepped out of the apartment, but left the door open, and then was somehow behind Karl, propelling him through the doorway with a large hand between the shoulder blades. “Go get her, tiger,” he said, smiling at Karl when Karl turned around to give Al a confused look.

“I do not understand. Is something wrong with Rosemary?”

Al shook his head. “Not my business to be telling you hers. I’ll leave her to tell you, if she chooses to.”

Karl continued looking at Al, confused, and perhaps under it all a little scared. But Al only made a shooing gesture with his hands and then turned and strode off down the hallway, leaving Karl behind in Rosemary’s open doorway.

Karl glanced over his shoulder into Rosemary’s dark apartment, then sighed and shut her front door, locking it behind him and toeing off his shoes in the entrance hall before making his way to her bedroom door. It was ajar, and he stood in the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light filtering in from the parking lot. From what he could see of the room, nothing much had changed in the past four and a half years. There was her bedside table and its lamp, her dresser, the wig stand on top sporting her current hair, the bed… Rosemary was curled up on the far side of it, facing away from him. The sheets on the side closest to him were rumpled, not in a way that suggested someone had been sleeping there, but more in a way that suggested someone very large sitting there on the edge of the bed, close enough to give comfort to the sleeping form of Rosemary.

Did she need comfort?

Karl sat on the edge of the bed himself, half-turned to watch Rosemary sleep. After a moment, the character of the air in the room changed; he wasn’t sure how, but he could always tell when she was awake. Maybe it was just her personality; it always seemed to precede her into any room she entered, changing the energy of it, drawing attention to her.

Rosemary peered over her shoulder at him and groaned. “Oh. It’s you,” she said, her voice hoarse, raspy.

Was it just with sleep, he wondered? Or had she been crying? Out loud, he said “Yes, it’s me.”

“Did Al let you in?”

“Yes.”

“That bastard.”

Karl almost grinned at that. “Yes. He can be one of those.”

Rosemary rolled over, the better to glare at him. “So why are you here?”

“I just wanted...” Karl sighed, trying to find the words for what he wanted. “Space is dangerous. This might be my last night on Earth.”

“So?”

“So I wanted to spend it with you, you ridiculous woman.”

Rosemary let out a soft, irritated huff at that. “I can’t imagine your boyfriend is happy about that.”

“I imagine about as happy as your boyfriend was when he let me in here.”

“Al’s not my boyfriend.”

“Well, Sterling is not mine,” Karl said, with a little irritation in his own voice. “We simply… we simply played together, as you might put it.”

“So you finally figured that one out.” Rosemary’s face was in shadow, but he could hear her smile in her voice. “Having fun playing, boy?”

“Not as much fun as playing with you was,” he whispered back. He reached out a hesitant hand across the space between them, cupping her cheek, running his thumb across her cheekbone. She let out a little gasp of breath, but she did not pull away. “Let me spend the night, suka. Let me stay here with you. That is all I want.”

Rosemary’s nod was felt more than seen.

Later, much later, halfway again to dawn, he was curled up around her in bed, nuzzling the nape of her neck, holding her close. There hadn’t been space for words over the past few hours, just space for touches, kisses… oh, blyad, she’d kissed him properly for once, not the little whispery kisses she’d tested out on him the last time they’d been together, but full-mouthed, passionate kisses, a little awkward and unpracticed but so perfect all the same. He couldn’t call this just a fuck, though he wanted to discount it as that. It would hurt less if it was just a fuck.

But he suspected she’d been making love to him, and he’d done his best to make love to her in return.

“Al said there was something you might want to tell me,” Karl whispered against Rosemary’s neck.

Rosemary shifted a bit and sighed. “Al doesn’t know when to keep his damn mouth shut,” she said, irritable. Karl waited in silence for her to continue, and for a moment so long that he might have thought she’d dozed off if it weren’t for the tension in the air, she added “It’s nothing you can do anything about. Just… just a work thing. It’ll work itself out in the end.”

He could not tell how much of this was the truth, and sighed himself. “Rosemary…”

She turned in his arms to look at him face-to-face, to cup his cheek in her hand. “I’ll be fine, Dmitri. I always am.”

He sighed again, but knew that her use of his birth name meant she was ready for him to drop this subject, and no further grilling would get more information out of her. “I will miss you,” he said instead.

“I’ll miss you too,” she responded, stroking his cheek, his ear, the nape of his neck, before pulling him into another one of her unpracticed, passionate kisses. He responded in kind, and for a few more long, quiet minutes there was only the attempt to meld together, to be one. But they were both old enough that the mind was willing, but the flesh no longer cooperated the way it once had, and they eventually broke apart, his arms still around her, her hands cupping his face as if he were the most precious thing in the universe.

“I might not come back, Rosemary,” he said, stroking her back and pulling her close, tucking her head under his, against his shoulder, resting his cheek against her forehead. “This might be… I might not come back.”

Rosemary sighed and wrapped her arms around him, stroking his back comfortingly. “I know. Space is… not the safest destination.”

“If I don’t come back…” He couldn’t find the words.

“If you don’t come back, I’ll make sure they give Decima to someone who believes in it the way you do,” she murmured sleepily against his chest.

He sighed. That hadn’t been what he’d meant to say at all, but it put a distance between them, brought them back to work. Still… it had been thoughtful. “Thank you.” He turned his head to kiss her forehead, and for the rest of the night, he held her sleeping form close, not daring to sleep himself.

He’d considered waking her again in the morning, before he slipped out, but the light of dawn brought him a look at the dark circles under her eyes, at the lines of exhaustion in her face. So instead, he pressed another kiss to her forehead and extracted himself carefully from her embrace, getting dressed again and heading back to his apartment for a quick shower before it was time to head to the pre-launch staging area.

Later that day, he sat there with the other members of the crew, dressed in most of the pressure suit he’d wear during launch, idly watching the pre-launch press event on a tv on the wall. The camera panned briefly across the crowd, all of them watching the events up on stage. All except for one round, brown face that was staring directly at the camera.

Karl met Rosemary’s eyes one last time before launch, knowing she couldn’t see him, but knowing all the same that it was him she was looking at.

Rosemary stared, long and hard, at the camera that panned occasionally across the crowd, knowing that the chance that Karl would be watching when it passed her by was infinitesimal but hoping that by some chance he’d see her, that he’d know she was looking for him.

She was glad he’d left before she’d woken up, she kept telling herself. It would only have been awkward to actually have to say the word goodbye. And who knows. She’d been weak enough to let him in her bed.

If he’d woken her, perhaps she would have been weak enough to admit that it was more likely he’d survive outer space only to come back and find her gone.

God. Cancer. Months of aches, pains, indigestion, and a doctor who kept telling her it was all in her head, that if she just lost some weight, it would all go away… never mind the fact that for all her weight, she was fit, that she was on her feet all day, that she could lift fifty pound file boxes with ease. No, all that mattered to her doctor was the damn number on the scale.

Al had been the one to drag her off to his own doctor, after an evening where he’d seen her unable to do more than pick at the dinner he’d brought for them both, only to vomit up what little she’d been able to get down less than an hour later.

He’d stayed with her as long as he could, pushing aside his other responsibilities, when ultrasounds and then X-rays came back showing several large masses in her abdomen that shouldn’t be there, wrapped around her internal organs, constricting, growing. 

And then, before he’d had to go, when he couldn’t put off his other responsibilities any longer, he’d sent her Karl.

She didn’t know yet whether she’d thank him or curse him for that when she saw him again.  
  



	27. Al dies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snippet, no smut.

June 22nd, 1996

Rosemary sat next to Al’s hospital bed, holding his limp hand in hers, barely able to breathe. The man was such an idiot. What had he been thinking, trying to go back to work a full two weeks before the doctors had thought he’d be recovered enough to do even the smallest part of his job?

As if in reaction to her angry, anxious thoughts, Al stirred.

“Hey there, you,” Rosemary said, doing her best to keep her voice gentle.

“Rhu-see?” His voice was slurred, and he was only able to open one eye—it was clear that the left side of his face was immobile. It looked to Rosemary like the doctor’s suggestion that he might bounce back just as fast from this stroke as he had from the last had been overly optimistic. But hey, she wasn’t a doctor.

“Yeah, it’s me, Al.”

“Wha happn?”

Rosemary squeezed his hand. “You had another stroke, Al.”

“Oh.” His open eye dropped shut again, and he went still and silent. “Sry.”

“Yeah, well, there’s not much you can do about it now.” Rosemary sighed and shut her eyes, leaning her forehead against his arm. “Al, you idiot, the doctors said at least a month before you could go back to work. You couldn’t even make it to a full three weeks?”

“Sry,” he mumbled again.

Rosemary found she was crying, hot tears trickling down her face and dripping on to Al’s arm, soaking the thin sheets on the hospital bed. “I can’t do this without you, Al. I can’t. You’ve gotta get better, okay? You’ve gotta listen to the doctors this time.”

“Dyin’, Rhu-see.”

“You can’t die. You’re not allowed. You’ve got too much life in you to die.” Rosemary was sobbing now, well and truly sobbing, and Al must have found the strength to lift his right arm, because his hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed weakly, and oh, god, he was so weak.

Rosemary lifted her head to look at him, and he was staring at her again with that one eye.

“Stay?” he asked, and Rosemary nodded.

And then she climbed carefully into the hospital bed next to him and held on as tight as she could to the only family she had left in her life.


	28. This is where it starts being all pain, all the time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No really, this hurts. (And also Hilbert gets a new, terrible alias.)

October 20th, 1997

The door of his lab flew open and one of the interchangables—one of the two young men who were training under Rosemary, and who Marius had yet to figure out how to tell apart since he’d come back from space a month before—came rushing in through the door, panting. Marius turned with a glare at the ready.

The young man—was this one Ronald?—held his hands up placatingly. “I know, I saw the sign on the door, no interruptions, but… but you have medical training, right?”

Marius eyed him cautiously. “…yes.”

“Miss Epps… she collapsed in her office. We were going to call an ambulance but she came to a bit and ordered Ron to drop the phone, said she’d be fine in a moment, but—”

As not-Ron stammered out this explanation, Marius whipped the slide out from the microscope and popped it into a nearby refrigerator, already writing this observation cycle off as a loss. Not-Ron… was the man’s name Gerald? Jerry sounded right. Jerry followed him out the door.

“She is conscious, then?”

“Yes, but woozy. And neither of us saw… she might have hit her head on the desk on the way down, but neither of us really know what to look for, and…”

“I do.” They jogged down the stairs to the floor where Rosemary’s office was in a silence broken only by little pants of breath from both of them and the quiet taps of their shoes on the linoleum.

Rosemary’s office door was open, and the interchangeable now identified as Ron looked up from behind the desk. Rosemary was propped up against the back wall of her office, rubbing her forehead and obviously irritated. She looked up as they entered the room and groaned. “Oh, not you.” She shot a glare at first Ron and then Jerry, punctuating it with a sharp “When I say I’ll be fine I mean I’ll be fine, boys. There was no need to call in the cavalry.”

Marius let out the breath he’d been holding in an exasperated sigh. “Now, now, suka, do not blame them for worrying.” In Marius’s peripheral vision, he noticed Jerry’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, followed by a worried glance back and forth between Marius and Rosemary. So Jerry knew some Russian, then. Or at least enough to be worried about Marius calling Jerry’s boss a bitch.

Marius crossed the room to where Ron was hovering and squatted down next to Rosemary, who had shut her eyes and was leaning back against the wall. “Well?”

She waved her hand nonchalantly at him, but didn’t bother opening her eyes. “Vasovagal syncope, Doctor. My stomach was off this morning and I didn’t eat breakfast, so I got a bit lightheaded when I tried to stand too fast. I’ll be fine in another minute or two, provided all you fellows stop hovering over me.”

“Hrm,” he said, putting two fingers under her chin and lifting her face towards better lighting. Behind him, Ron had wandered over to where Jerry was standing at the door and the two of them were having a brief whispered conference which Marius did his best to ignore. He pulled a pen light out of his pocket. “Can you open your eyes? I must check pupil response.” She nodded slightly, a motion more felt than seen. He positioned his body between her face and the overhead light. “Right eye? Left eye?” She followed his commands, wincing a little at the flash of the penlight. Her pupils were the same size, but their response was sluggish, the left one in particular. Marius turned and flipped on the lamp at Rosemary’s desk, pointing it her direction. Her eyes were closed again when he turned back to her, and he examined her face carefully in the stronger light of the desk lamp. It threw the new wrinkles that had appeared on her face some time over the past two years into sharp relief, emphasized the dark circles under her eyes that makeup couldn’t quite hide. She looked tired, and Rosemary almost never looked tired. She looked ill.

“It appears there may be some swelling here—” Marius brushed his fingers against a place high on her forehead, and Rosemary let out a little pained hiss of breath and opened her eyes again, just wide enough to glare at him. “Definitely some swelling here. You need to remove this,” he gestured at her wig, “so that I can make sure you did not damage your head in any way.”

Rosemary’s eyes darted towards Ron and Jerry and she made a face. “I am not taking my hair off with the two of them in the room,” she whispered.

Marius rolled his eyes. “Vain woman.”

“Absolutely.”

Marius stood and made a shooing motion with his hands. “Out. And close the door behind you.” The two young men eyed him warily. “She will be safe with me, I promise.” They both looked at Rosemary behind him, and she must have nodded, because they turned and left.

Marius was back on his knees next to Rosemary before the door clicked shut, and watched her carefully remove her wig and the wig cap underneath. She moved slowly, carefully, wincing as she worked loose a bobby pin that had gotten stuck to something. She was stiff in a way the old Rosemary had never been. This is wrong, he thought. Something is terribly wrong.

Rosemary set the wig and the cap carefully aside. Underneath, her hair was patchy, and had gone a stark white. Marius made a small sound at the sight of it that made Rosemary look at him strangely, but her eyes darted away from his face after a moment, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. “Well, get on with it,” she said, looking down at her lap.

Marius touched her scalp carefully, looking for further bumps. Aside from the lump on her forehead—which looked, after a closer inspection, as if it had come from contact with the carpeted floor—her head seemed to be intact. Without thinking about it, he let one of his hands drift down to cup her cheek, and then lower… and then he froze, because all of his senses were screaming at him, saying something was wrong, and his unconscious exploration of her neck turned into a necessary one.

“Your lymph nodes are swollen.”

Rosemary pulled away from his hands a bit violently, letting out a little ouf of breath as the back of her head bumped against the wall. “My doctor is aware of the matter and has it well in hand, I assure you.”

Marius stared at her, frowning, and she stared back, her expression not giving anything away. After a moment, he huffed irritably. “That will not work on me, suka.”

Rosemary looked off to the ground beside her, staring intently at her wig. After a moment she spoke. “Not right now. I’ve got work to get on with.” She lifted her gaze to meet his, and her eyebrows met in a little frown. “Tonight. I’m sure you remember which apartment is mine?”

Marius nodded. “I miss being next to you.”

Rosemary glared at him. “You do not. Your new apartment is much nicer, anyway.”

Marius frowned. “How do you know that?”

“Who did you think got to select the furniture for it?” She stared at him, her face bleak, her voice suddenly quiet. “I tried to find some pieces you would like. Something to make it a bit less… generic.”

“Rosemary…”

“Tonight. We’ll talk tonight.” She sat up a bit, and pulled her wig cap back on, then her wig. “Everything straight?”

Marius reached out and adjusted her wig, stroking a few strands of hair back into place, his heart aching. Such a simple, domestic thing, making sure she was ready to face the world again. Something he hadn’t been sure he’d ever be able to do again for her. “Now it is.”

He stood as she slid the bobby pins back into place and offered her a hand up. She was lighter than she had once been, and weaker.

Something was wrong, and he did not know how he would make it through the hours until that night.  
  


Rosemary had tried to stay in the lab as late as she normally did. But Jerry and Ron were having none of it, Jerry in particular.

“I hate to have to use strong language with you, ma’am, but you’re going to go back to your apartment at a reasonable hour and get some damn rest,” he said, shortly after five o’clock. “Ron and I can take care of things here for the rest of the evening. You’ve got no call to be collapsing on a Monday, but you did, so you’re going to do the sensible thing for once and let us do what we can to lift the burden.”

Rosemary sighed at that and tried to argue. “Look, the lab’s expanding. You two will be co-managing a team of twelve in the end, with only half as much more space. There’s a lot to do and not much time to do it and you need my help.”

The boys exchanged a look, then Ron said, in a quiet, insistent voice, “You’re not going to be much help to anybody if you overtax yourself. Go home, Miss Epps. We’ve got Charles on call if we need him.”

“Charles is leaving soon for graduate school.” It had taken Rosemary nearly 10 years to convince Charles that he should go back and finish his degree. He’d been too good to be her assistant when she’d hired him. She hoped he’d finally accept it, now that he’d been re-accepted into his old doctoral program.

“Well, all the more reason for you to get some rest while we’ve still got him on hand,” said Jerry firmly. “Go home, Rosemary.”

The use of her given name let her know that Jerry wasn’t going to take any more shit from her, for all she was technically his boss. Rosemary sighed again. “Fine. The lab’s yours, boys. Play nice with the other kids, don’t stay up too late, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Both of them rolled their eyes at that last pronouncement, and Jerry made a shooing motion with his hand, already picking the phone in her office up, probably to continue the calls she’d been working her way through to the satellite locations that housed some of the scientists that were moving to Goddard’s main complex that fall.

It was a goddamn mess, that’s what it was. Mr. Kerr had gotten some bug in his ear about corporate espionage, and he was making everyone miserable as a result, trying to move as many of the high-clearance projects as possible onto the main Goddard campus. Well, with Al gone… perhaps paranoia was warranted, at least until Mr. Kerr found someone to replace Al. The search had been going for more than a year, though, and things were still in flux.

And things were in flux on Goddard’s campus. What had once been green spaces were being replaced with new apartment buildings, new labs, new fabrication plants… it was all a glory of steel and bulletproof glass, but Rosemary missed the open grassy areas, the water features, the artfully-maintained copses of trees that used to dot the campus grounds. There were, of course, flowerbeds all around, and there were also greenhouses on campus, but as the greenhouses were mostly used for research, they were occasionally… hazardous to spend one’s free time in.

Rosemary thought, as she left the lab, that perhaps she’d wrenched something in her hips or lower back when she’d fallen earlier that day, but nothing would have allowed her to show the pain of it in front of Jerry and Ron, and especially not in front of… No. Don’t think of him, she told herself. You’ll have enough to deal with facing him later tonight without lingering on him like a lovesick schoolgirl.

But she’d been making her slow and limping way back towards her apartment complex for perhaps five minutes or so when she heard the swift footsteps and panting breath of someone who had been hurrying. The form of Marius Vandersee appeared in the corner of her eye, taking a few more hurried steps before falling in at her side, keeping to the sluggish pace that was all she was capable of.

She felt such a surge of affection, and such an equally strong surge of resentment, that he would seek her out now, that he would not even allow her the space to get back to her apartment and compose herself, to decide how to tell him what she needed to say.

He offered her his arm, silently, and she let out an irritated huff of breath and took it, leaning on him more than she strictly needed to. She told herself it was revenge for not giving her space.

She worried it was just because it felt so good to finally have him at her side again.

They’d made it to the edge of the parking lot outside her apartments, now seeming sadly reduced and closed in by the other buildings that had sprung up around it over the past two years, when she finally gave in and broke the silence. “So. Tell me. Which one of those two brats sold me out, and what was his going price?”

Marius let out a humorless little laugh at that. “Neither, suka. They are worried for your health. I only had to say that, if they let me know when you planned to leave, I would come by your apartment and do a follow-up examination.”

“It was Jerry, wasn’t it. Little bastard was on the phone when I was leaving the office.”

Marius hmm-ed noncommittally at that, and waited for her to use her keycard on the front door of the apartment complex. He supported her down the hall to her apartment, waited patiently again for her to unlock the door, closed it behind them. Supported her as she kicked her heels off, hell, half-carried her down the small hall to the living room, helping her lower herself to the couch.

And then he crouched on the floor in front of her, looking up at her with wide, anxious eyes, worried lines suddenly appearing on his face. “Tell me, suka.”

Rosemary opened her mouth to speak, and couldn’t find the words. So instead she unbuttoned her jacket, slid out of it, threw it over the arm of the couch. And then she unbuttoned the right wrist of her blouse and started rolling it back, reminded as she did of that night, so long ago, when he’d half-undressed her, trying to make her comfortable after a long day at work.

Well. Very soon, neither of them would be comfortable.

The sleeve revealed the bandage over the capped catheter end, the slight bulge where it met her skin and went under.

And Marius’s eyes opened wider, his breath left him in a rush, and he sat back hard on the floor, staring up at her.  
  


Marius stared at the catheter going into Rosemary’s arm, not properly processing. “That is a PICC line,” he said, his mouth moving faster than his mind for once.

“Yes,” she said, her voice quiet, even.

Marius swallowed. There were any number of reasons to get one put in, he told himself. There were any number of things—“Cancer?” came his voice, cutting his train of thought off.

“Yes. At first.”

“What stage?” He looked directly at Rosemary, but she turned her head away, her jaw clenching, unable or perhaps unwilling to meet his eye.

“It’s… they thought it was operable. At first.”

“I…I see.” Marius took a deep breath. “And later?”

Rosemary’s lip twitched, her expression went harsh and bitter. “My body lit up like a goddamn Christmas tree, that MRI they did after the first round of chemo. And after that… well, Pryce is good for stop-gap measures, if not at actual cures.”

His breath left him in a rush again. He’d seen some of the results of Pryce’s stop-gap measures, over the years. He moved to take her hands in his own, but she avoided him, moving to clutch her own elbows, holding her arms close to her body. So instead, he rested his hands on her knees, staring up at her, willing her to look at him.

There was a question he had to ask and he did not know whether he wanted to know the answer. But it has to be asked, he told himself. I need to know.

“Rosemary, when did you find out?”

Her eyes darted to meet his, briefly, and her expression turned to one of anguish, but she could not seem to answer.

That, in and of itself, was answer enough for him.

“Blyad, suka!” he found himself almost yelling. “You should have told me.”

Rosemary’s eyes darted to meet his again. “You were leaving.”

“No. You let me into your bed that night. I deserved to know.” Marius’s voice broke, and he felt a hot surge of anger.

“And you would have done what, worried uselessly from four light years away?” She turned to face him fully, angry herself, leaning forward to push at his shoulders, push him away. He let out an angry hiss and grabbed her by the wrists, keeping her hands on him, pressing back up towards her until he was nose to nose with her.

“Could have done something. Anything. At least you would not have been so alone, suka.”

Rosemary blinked, and her anger drained out of her in an instant. Marius wished that he could control his own rage so well.

“Well,” she said, her voice now calm. “I wasn’t alone. Al was here.”

“Yes, of course, Al.” Marius let out another angry hiss of breath. “Where is Al, exactly? I do not see him here now, suka. Where has he gone, hm? Abandoned you to go have his fun?”

Rosemary’s face was suddenly ashy and pale. “Oh, god, no one told you,” she said, her voice drained, barely audible.

Marius’s own anger turned into confusion. “Told me what?”

“Al’s dead. Died a bit over a year ago. He…” Rosemary seemed to be casting about mentally for the right words. “He had a stroke. And Al… he’s never been one to sit still, recovery was intolerable to him, so he had another, and then… no.” Rosemary shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “That, you definitely don’t have clearance for. Need to know, only.”

“So you have been alone since then,” said Marius, his voice still cracking, and what he suspected were tears threatening the corners of his eyes.

“I suppose I have,” Rosemary said, her own voice wobbly. “But I always was before.”

Marius tried to think of something to say, but instead he stood enough to slide on to the couch next to Rosemary, and gathered her up in his arms, pulling her close, carefully brushing the tall bangs of her wig aside to press a kiss to her temple.

And for just a little while, she let him comfort her.


	29. Strictly pain from here on out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No smut. Just hurt.

October 31st, 1997

Marius waited until the end of the month, when Rosemary usually had a check-in with the head of communications, once Mr. Carter, now Mr. Kerr, the same man with a different face. Marius waited, and planned what he was going to say. 

And then, when he checked Rosemary’s schedule and noticed an hour long block of time, unlabeled but clearly set aside for something, he made his move. 

He walked in to the anteroom of Kerr’s office and greeted the secretary perfunctorily. “Miss Epps is meeting with Mr. Kerr, yes?" 

"Yes,” said the secretary, only half paying attention, only to spring up out of his chair and make for Marius as Marius strode across the room to the door to the inner office. “No-wait-you-can’t-go-in-there!” said the secretary in a rush, trying to block Marius’s way, but Marius already had his hand on the doorknob and easily slipped around the man and into Kerr’s inner office. 

Both Rosemary and Mr. Kerr looked up at Marius’s entrance, the former startled, the latter almost… bored? Marius frowned for a moment, confused, but then started in on what he’d been planning to say. 

“You will let me care for Rosemary." 

Mr. Kerr’s bored expression grew even more so. "I beg your pardon?" 

"From now until when…” Marius looked directly at Rosemary, who was staring at him with her mouth agape. “…until when she passes, you will let me care for her.” He turned back to Mr. Kerr, meeting the man’s steely grey eyes with a steely gaze of his own. “I will take care of her medical needs. Palliative care, whatever is necessary. And she will live with me." 

"Dmitri, don’t do this,” said Rosemary in her awkward Russian. Marius ignored her, staring Mr. Kerr down. 

“And if I don’t?” asked Mr. Kerr, raising an eyebrow. 

“Then do not expect me to ever cooperate willingly with your wishes again." 

"Dmitri!” Rosemary’s voice was tight and urgent, on the verge of panic. 

“Let the man speak his piece, Rosemary,” said Mr. Kerr, his voice calm. “And if I do allow this… unorthodox behavior?" 

"Then you will have my loyalty.” Marius paused, remembering something Rosemary had said several years before. “No. You will have my fealty.”

Rosemary let out a choked little gasp at that, and Mr. Kerr smiled, a terrible predatory smile. “Very well. You have my permission. Set up house, or whatever it is you intend to do.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Now get out of my office and let me finish up this meeting you so rudely interrupted, hm?" 

Marius nodded stiffly to Mr. Kerr and turned to go, pausing for just a moment to put a hand on Rosemary’s shoulder and squeeze gently. She glared up at him, obviously furious. 

Well, thought Marius as he left the office and walked past the equally furious glare he was getting from Mr. Kerr’s secretary, he hadn’t expected Rosemary to be happy about it. 

But he hoped that he would have enough time left with her to convince her that it had been necessary.  
  


Rosemary turned her glare on Mr. Kerr as Marius shut the door behind himself. “You knew he was going to do that,” she said accusingly. 

Mr. Kerr smiled. “I will admit, I wasn’t expecting him to do it with you present. A nice bit of maneuvering on his part, don’t you think?" 

Rosemary let out a disgusted huff of breath. 

"Well, it did neatly assure your compliance,” Mr. Kerr pointed out. 

Rosemary stared at Mr. Kerr, her face wrinkled with something close to anguish. “You can’t expect me to go through with this, sir.” She took a deep shaky breath. “Please don’t make me go through with this, sir. I can’t bear the thought that… I don’t know if I can let him see me at my worst." 

Mr. Kerr only continued to stare evenly at Rosemary. 

Rosemary cursed under her breath. "Why, sir? Why now?" 

Mr. Kerr’s expression changed, becoming almost sympathetic. "You’ve worked hard for us. For me, for Pryce, for the company. You deserve a little kindness in the end." 

"Bullshit,” said Rosemary, her voice full of venom. “Why now, sir?" 

Mr. Kerr’s face went smooth and even again. "He also needs a reminder of what’s at stake." 

Rosemary let out a breathless little laugh. "Of course. I’m to be motivation, then, after I’m gone. Another person he failed to save.” She glared at him. “You’re a bastard, sir." 

Mr. Kerr shrugged. "Are you going to do it?" 

Rosemary ground her teeth and stared at the far corner of Mr. Kerr’s office ceiling for a long, quiet moment. "Fuck you,” she said at last, on a low, quiet hiss of breath. “Fuck you,” she said again, dropping her gaze from the ceiling to meet his eye. “Fuck you for giving me an impossible choice, because I know you’re going to use me either way.” Rosemary let out a long, pained sigh. “Fuck you, sir." 

"I take it you plan to take the path that leads to his… fealty.” Mr. Kerr chuckled at that. “What a delightful turn of phrase. I wonder where he picked it up?”

Rosemary had her suspicions, but instead she said “I wouldn’t know, sir,” and lifted a piece of paper off the desk. “Shall we get back to the task at hand?" 

Mr. Kerr smiled. "Always efficient, Rosemary. Yes, let’s continue.”  
  


Marius went back to his lab in a daze, then into the little office just off it, where he collapsed into the chair of the desk he would soon be sharing with another scientist, where he typed most of his reports and proposals these days. One of his newlab techs popped her head into the room to check on him, but he waved her off, then rested his elbows on the desk and rubbed his hands over his face, nudging his glasses up onto the top of his head, taking deep, calming breaths.

He had done it.

He had done it, and Mr. Kerr had agreed.

It was that last bit that was throwing him for a loop, Marius realized. He’d expected to have to fight and argue his way to a compromise that was not nearly everything he wanted. But Mr. Kerr had agreed, and what Mr. Kerr agreed to, Rosemary would never be able to bring herself to go against. She might fight it at first, but in the end, she would give in.

He wanted to shout with glee and scream with anxiety all at once. She would hate him for this, oh she would hate him, but he would be with her. They would be together until the end, whenever that came.

And it was coming. He knew it was coming, he knew she would not be able to escape it, but until then they would be able to be together.

He let out one last, deep breath, then sat up, resettling his glasses on the bridge of his nose. And then the pile of notes on the desk caught his eye.

After his human subject had died, quickly, painfully, the virus eating through his system at an accelerated pace, after every single one of the other biomass samples only showed fragmented traces of Decima’s DNA after the first set of radiation trials, he’d set aside his research notes, frustrated, angry, unable to understand what had gone so very, very wrong. Why would radiation have caused such a reaction in the human body, when it was clear from his other samples that this strain was too weak to stand up to stellar radiation? He’d sequenced the DNA of both the virus and the man it had infected, out there on the station, and both were identical to the sequences gathered before he’d gone to space.

But Mr. Carter had not been willing to bring Karl back to earth, despite the fact that he was virtually useless out there. True, he functioned as a medical officer aboard the station, but he was redundant in that role. True, he had other experiments, and Rosemary had even sent along a few more that could be done with the equipment and materials he had aboard, but that took up only a fraction of the time he had available to him. So he’d spent the next 20 months switching from job to job aboard the station, learning from whoever needed help in that moment, desperate for something, anything to do, anything to keep his mind off the fact that Decima did not work, that this test was a complete failure, that he would have to start again once he returned to Earth.

And now he was cursing that failure again, cursing the fact that he had someone he wanted to save.

For the first time in a very long time, there was someone he desperately wanted to help live, and he was not ready to save her.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the open door to the office, and he looked up to find Mr. Kerr’s secretary glaring at him.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Kerr wants to know if he should be sending movers to your apartment or to Rosemary’s.”

Marius blinked, startled. He hadn’t expected Mr. Kerr to move so quickly. And his mind went to Rosemary’s apartment, the apartment where they’d spent those brief, joyful weeks, nearly seven years before. And then he remembered the dingy walls, the run-down furniture, the dimness of the light that filtered in through the narrow windows now that other buildings had grown up around the apartment complex, and contrasted it with his new apartment, on the third floor of a brand new building, with its new furnishings, its bright, wide windows. It really was better, just as Rosemary had claimed. And he wanted to share it with her, share the furniture she’d chosen to make it less generic for him, share the light and the space and the openness of it with her.

“Rosemary’s apartment,” he said.

Mr. Kerr’s secretary nodded. “They’ll be there in half an hour, if you want to oversee.”

“Very well.”

Mr. Kerr’s secretary glared at Marius one final time, then flounced off down the hall, obviously still incensed by Marius’s behavior from earlier that day.

Marius just wished he could remember the man’s name.  
  


Rosemary left work early, having been practically shoved out the door by Ron and Jerry with the pronouncement that her end-of-month meeting with Mr. Kerr had obviously been a bit fraught and taken too much out of her, no they didn’t mind staying late, and they especially didn’t mind working on Saturday instead of her, she was to take a long weekend for once, dammit.

Well. They were right. It had been a bit fraught. And the long weekend would be useful, though she didn’t intend to rest and relax. She intended to figure out a way to get out of carrying through with this nonsense that Marius had proposed and that Mr. Kerr, damn the man, had approved with hardly a thought, had apparently intended to approve before she even knew it was on the table.

There had to be a way out. She was too old, too tired, too… too ill to countenance setting up in a domestic fashion with Marius. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bear to let him see how weak she really was, behind closed doors. She couldn’t bear… half the time she was incontinent, her long illness and the modifications Pryce had made to compensate had dragged her back to a time before she could rely on her own bodily functions, and she could not cope with him knowing she had to resort to goddamn adult diapers most days to keep from disgracing herself.

Rosemary couldn’t bear to have him watch her die, not from so close. She’d avoided him the best she could since she’d returned from space, making sure that, even in their necessary meetings, they were never alone, always having Ron or Jerry or both at her side. Well, they needed to learn, needed to take over the ropes themselves one of these days.

Sure, she’d let Marius in her apartment the Monday before last, and had let him hold her for a time, but she’d pushed him away soon enough. And she thought she’d made it clear when she did that him caring for her was still something that could not happen.

Marius had apparently had a different plan.

Well. Fuck him. And fuck Mr. Kerr. Fuck the both of them for putting this choice before her, the choice between capitulating to their demands and binding Marius irrevocably to Goddard, to Kerr, or to defy Kerr’s orders, push Marius away, knowing that if she did Marius would carry through with his threat to never cooperate again, and would lose Decima, lose his life’s work as a result.

There had to be a third way out, a way that would free her from this… this nonsense, but which would keep Marius from throwing his life away, from throwing his life’s work away.

She just needed time to think.

She wasn’t going to get it, she realized as soon as she reached the apartment buildings. There was a small flatbed truck there, one of the ones that had been going back and forth for months, full of equipment, or moving personal items out of storage. As she watched, a husky young woman wearing work gloves and carrying a large box pushed her way out the front door of the apartment building and added the box to the pile that had already half-filled the back of the truck.

She might be wrong, Rosemary told herself, as the young woman held the front door open for her. But no. Down at the end of the hall, a young man was exiting the door of Rosemary’s apartment with another box.

Do I really own so many things? she wondered, reflecting on the pile of boxes in the truck. The young man nodded to her as he went by, and the young woman brushed by on her way back to Rosemary’s apartment, and Rosemary herself walked down the hall numbly to the door of her apartment and looked in.

She caught sight of the young woman disappearing into her bedroom, and Marius looked up guiltily from where he was sitting in the living room, sifting through what looked like the final pile of papers from her side tables and packing them all into a box.

She was furious suddenly, incandescent with rage, and she stormed over to loom over Marius on the couch, grabbing the papers he was holding out of his hand and tossing them off to one side.

“How. Fucking. DARE. You,” she said, slowly and clearly, enunciating each word.

“Mr. Kerr’s secretary told me when they would be starting. I had assumed he told you as well,” said Marius, looking up at Rosemary calmly.

“Well he obviously fucking didn’t, now did he?”

Marius shrugged, and leaned to one side, starting to gather up the papers. “This is happening, suka, whether you wish it to or not. You should perhaps try to accept it.”

Rosemary let out a little screech of anger, and grabbed the papers from him again, tossing them further, ignoring his irritated huff of breath, the mess of scattered paper that she was making. “I am going to go kill Kerr,” she said, her voice full of steely rage. “With my bare goddamn hands. And then I’m going to come back and kill you too, and don’t think that the fact that I’m giving you a warning means I feel any fucking affection for you, because I do not.” She paused, staring him in the eye. “I want you terrified of what’s coming, because I will kill you for this Dmitri, I swear to god.”

Marius only set his hands to her hips and pushed her gently back, enough so that he could stand and look down at her. She briefly considered shoving him back onto the couch, but was frozen instead, incapable of moving as he wrapped his arms around her and drew her close against his body, murmuring soft nothings in Russian against her wig as he simply held her.

Rosemary burst into tears, and let him hold her.

“How fucking dare you, Dmitri?” she sobbed quietly into his shirt. “I’ve tried so hard, so goddamn hard to protect you.”

“I am a grown man,” he murmured, stroking her back, holding her close. “I do not need you to protect me. I have made this choice, and I know what it will lead to.”

“You have no idea what this will lead to.” Rosemary took a deep breath, and tried to slow her tears, but they kept pouring down her cheeks. One of Marius’s hands left her back, only to appear in her peripheral vision holding a handkerchief, and she took it, blowing her nose, wiping tears off her face, sure she was smearing eyeliner and mascara everywhere and not really caring. “He’s going to fucking use me to keep you in line after I’m gone. He’s going to remind you, again and again, that you could have saved me, if you’d just gotten Decima to work a little bit faster.”

“If you think I do not feel that acutely without his reminders, you do not know me at all,” he said gravely, pulling back a bit to look down at her. “And if you think I have not been looking back on the past seven years and regretting every time I allowed you to push me away… Blyad, Rosemary. If I had still been in your life, perhaps I would have noticed something was wrong when there was still time to fix it.”

Rosemary let out a shaky laugh at that, and her tears slowed finally. “It never would have worked. One or the other of us would have been banished to the ends of the earth when Carter realized we were affecting the other’s productivity again. Or off into space, where accidents happen, where a rotation can be extended indefinitely.”

“So why is he allowing this now?”

“It won’t last long. I keep hearing I’ll be lucky to make it to the end of the year. And… and he’s getting more value out of it in the future than the lost productivity now,” Rosemary said. “And maybe, just a little, he does feel some affection for me. Or some… some guilt that I wound up like this.” She paused for a moment, and thought. “No. Not guilt. He’s never felt that.”

Marius laughed a little as well, and looked around at the scattered papers. “We are almost done. Would you like to do one final check through the apartment?”

Rosemary sighed, and wiped her eyes again, noting the smears of makeup on the handkerchief with a bit of guilt. “Let me go to the bathroom and get a little cleaned up first. Then… yes. Of course.”

Rosemary disappeared into the bathroom and Marius quickly gathered up the papers she'd flung aside and packed them away, followed by the remaining stack off her side table. He unearthed another pair of reading glasses as he did so, pale purple with little silver insets. They'd been finding glasses all over the apartment, hidden behind the contents of her cupboards, tucked into the pockets of her suits, buried among the papers in the living room. There had even been a pair tucked in to the little shelf just inside the door of the fridge.

He didn't know if she'd always been this forgetful where her reading glasses were concerned, or if it was a sign of something worse, a sign of that brilliant mind of hers starting to degrade. The times he'd encountered her in the lab complex, she'd seemed as sharp as ever, but given the way she'd managed to hide how very sick she was… he did not know.

He needed to see her medical records. He hoped that Mr. Kerr would arrange for that as efficiently as he'd arranged to have Rosemary move in with Marius.

There was the sound of rushing water, and Rosemary emerged from the bathroom, shaking her hands dry, the worst smudges of her makeup wiped away. She gave him a brilliant smile, one of her bright, corporate shark smiles, but the falseness of her smile didn't stop him from smiling hesitantly back.

“Well. Shall we?” she said, and went in to the kitchen, opening cabinets, checking drawers. “You'll take a look up where I can't see, right?”

Marius nodded. “Though I cannot imagine that you are capable of reaching some of these shelves.”

“I used to have a step stool,” Rosemary said. “But I took it in to the lab one day and it disappeared, and I never quite got around to replacing it.”

“Mm,” said Marius, noncommittally, opening a cabinet and standing on his tiptoes to peer at the upper shelves. “Nothing here that I can see.”

“Not even reading glasses?” responded Rosemary from somewhere beneath the sink.

“Ah, no,” said Marius, suddenly relieved. “You do not seem to be able to keep very good track of them, it is true.”

Rosemary stood up slowly, and started opening drawers. “I have too many pairs, is all. They’re an easy way to add a pop of color to an outfit, and I do so like having accent colors. But once you wind up with more than ten pairs, well…” Rosemary shrugged.

Marius opened Rosemary’s freezer, spotting what looked like might be another pair of reading glasses embedded in the frost in the back. “Indeed.” He would leave them for the next occupant of the apartment, he decided.

They made it through the rest of the rooms, Rosemary giving the drawer of her dresser where the sex toys had been stored an appalled look while they were in the bedroom. He thought about reassuring her, about telling her that the movers had handed him a box and suggested he get any sensitive materials packed away first, but she’d stopped talking as they went through the apartment, going cold and distant.

Or perhaps she was just tired, he thought, taking a look at her face when they made it back outside. The dark circles he’d noted the last time he’d been this close to her were still there, the wrinkles, the lines of pain etched even deeper into her face, if that was possible. She went to her car, and he followed, pushing her gently away from the door and holding out his hand for the keys. She sighed and handed them over without argument, getting into the passenger seat, not even protesting when he ground the gears several times during the short trip to the parking lot in front of the brand new apartment complex he was living in now.

They took the elevator to the third floor, and Marius took Rosemary by the shoulders once they were inside his apartment, looking down at her with concern. “Go lay down for a bit, hm? I can take care of the movers.”

Rosemary frowned and opened her mouth as if to protest, then sighed and shook her head, turning slowly and heading towards his bedroom. It didn’t surprise him that she knew which door it was behind; she’d said she’d picked out the furniture for this apartment. He watched her until the door closed, then turned to his kitchen counter and the thick manila envelope that had appeared on it since this morning.

By the time the movers appeared, having packed up the last bits and pieces of Rosemary’s apartment, Marius was so deep in the contents of the envelope that he only just managed to surface long enough acknowledge the movers, to gesture to the corner of his living room as the best place to put the boxes for now. And then he returned to Rosemary’s medical records, to the report on the treatments that had been tried, to the biopsy reports. He was still reading when the movers left the apartment, going back and forth between different sections, putting together a timeline of Rosemary’s illness in his head.

It painted more grim a picture than even Rosemary’s plain-spoken “lit up like a Christmas tree” had. And what she’d allowed Pryce to do to her…

It gave him a good idea of what to expect over the coming months. He did not think Rosemary was going to take it well, the slow decay she would be experiencing, the loss of faculties, of the ability to walk on her own, to control her own biological processes. If he thought about it simply in terms of his job as a doctor, Marius thought he could manage to get through this, but knowing it was Rosemary…

Well. Rosemary was strong. She had to have been, to have made it through what she’d survived so far. And when her strength gave out, he wanted to be there for her, to let her rely on his strength instead, and damn whatever consequences it would have for him.

Marius sighed, and set the pile of papers aside. He would check on her. Take her vitals. Make sure she was resting.

But when he opened the door and saw her curled up on the bed, her back to the door, still fully dressed except for her jacket, and the wig which was now hanging off a bedpost, the thought of being her doctor went out of his mind, and the thought of being… of being her partner took over. Marius climbed carefully onto the bed, doing his best not to disturb her, and undid the hook on her skirt, unzipped it, ignoring the fact that she was wearing… oh, poor Rosemary, what an indignity to suffer. No wonder she was pushing him away.

Her breathing seemed to ease a bit as the waistband of the skirt loosened. He wanted to undress her more, to get rid of the pantyhose, free her of every bit of restrictive clothing, but he didn’t think he could do so without waking her. So instead he curled up behind her, fitting his body to hers, wrapping an arm protectively around her.

He expected that when she woke up, she would be angry again, would push him away with every emotional tool in her arsenal, but until then he would provide her with whatever comfort was his to give.  
  


Rosemary woke up and wanted immediately to curse. Dr. Vandersee… Marius… Dmitri… was curled up in bed with her, his arm around her middle, pulling her close to his body. Not that she could see him, but her body knew his so well, even though it had been years since they'd shared a bed.

It hadn't been some kind of nightmare, then. He and Kerr had really conspired to put her in the goddamn unbearable situation she found herself in now.

He shifted a bit, pressing a kiss to the back of her neck. “You are awake.”

“Yes.” She didn't want to give him anything, but the courtesy of answering even implied questions had been drilled into her since birth.

“Did you know that it was this place that gave you cancer?” he asked, conversationally.

“After the biopsy came back, they asked the crew of the Athena to run some tests on Dr. Falk’s remains. So yes. I knew. Just… just not soon enough to do anything about it.”

“They should have been monitoring you, after you'd been exposed. They should have—” Marius’s voice was tight and choked.

“If the pre-launch physicals didn't find anything wrong with Dr. Falk, what makes you think closer monitoring would have done any good in my case? We didn't know what to look for, let alone to look at all.”

“But surely after Dr. Falk died—”

“After being exposed to intense stellar radiation while running an experiment aboard the Athena, and you know what sort of risks come with that, so don't you start with me.” Rosemary said, cutting him off, her irritation evident in her voice despite the fact that she'd been trying to keep her tone calm. She shoved his arm off her midsection and tried to push herself upright, but she moved too fast and only made herself dizzy and lightheaded instead. She collapsed back to her side with an irritated huff. “Goddamn it.”

Marius let out a little murmur of concern, and stroked a comforting hand along her shoulder.

“We need to talk,” Rosemary said. “I know it's probably too late to make it happen today, but we can move all my things back to my apartment tomorrow. And then you can go to Kerr and tell him that, I don't know, that I'm a difficult patient, and that it will be impossible to take care of me and do your job properly, and that you just hadn't thought your request through.”

Marius wrapped his hand around her middle again and snuggled close against her back. “And why would I do that?”

Rosemary sighed. “Because this is ridiculous, that's why. You've already admitted that he'll be able to use me against you no matter what. Why take the path that will only make this whole ordeal harder on both of us?”

Marius pressed another kiss to the back of her neck, and then lifted his head to whisper in her ear. “Rosemary? Stop trying to be so fucking noble.”

Rosemary wasn't sure whether she wanted to laugh or cry. “What the fuck do you mean, noble? And since when do you curse in English?”

“If cursing in English will get you to pay attention, it has done its job,” Marius said, answering her second question first. “And of course you are trying to be noble. You think you can save me pain, by pushing me away. For once in your life, be selfish, Rosemary. For once, let yourself have what you want, and do not think about what effect it will have on others.”

Rosemary let out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and lifted a hand to wipe tears away from her eyes. “You think me pushing you away is noble?” she managed to get out around another sob. “Well g-guess fucking what, Marius? It's the… the most goddamn fucking selfish thing I've ever done in my life.” Rosemary paused, swallowing another sob. “Do you… do you fucking think I want you to see me like this? Do you think I want you to remember me as a frail old woman who…” Rosemary broke off, sobbing in earnest now, and for all she wanted to push Marius away, the arm he wrapped tightly around her middle grounded her, gave her an anchor in the storm of her own emotions.

“I am sorry,” he said, resting his cheek against the nape of her neck, his body tucked close against hers as he held her safe and secure. “I did not consider that aspect of it. Still—”

“Just stop. Please.” Rosemary managed to get out. “And if you… if you care about me at all, if you…” she broke off, unable to say the word, knowing that if she offered him any sign that love might be a factor, he would never let go of her. “I'm a dying animal, Dmitri,” she said instead. “Let me do what all dying animals do. Let me leave you behind and crawl back into my hole and die with whatever dignity is left to me.”

Rosemary felt the drip of tears against her neck, heard the sound of his sob against her. And she did her best to harden her heart against him.

She had no time left to love this man. The best she could do was make sure his love for her did not destroy him.


	30. A slow fade...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rosemary dies slowly.

November 3rd, 1997

In the end, Rosemary got most of what she wanted. She'd gone back to her old apartment complex the day after she'd been forcibly moved out of it, only to find that her apartment was undergoing a deep clean and remodel, and wouldn’t be ready for human occupation for a week. From there, it didn't take very much persuading for Doctor Vandersee to get her to see that the apartment next door to his, which was still waiting on an occupant, would be much better for her than her old apartment had been. If she wasn't going to let him care for her as he wanted to, he'd said, she could at least let him be nearby in case she needed medical assistance.

And she knew who to ask, knew the machinery of Goddard so well from the bottom up that by Monday morning, she'd been moved out of Vandersee’s apartment into the one next door, without needing a single word of approval from Kerr to make it happen.

Of course, that didn't stop Mr. Kerr from hearing about it. At two in the afternoon, Rosemary was given the order to drop everything and report to him.

“Rosemary,” he said, his voice sharp with irritation.

“Sir?” Rosemary responded, keeping her tone purposefully even.

“I don't like it when people throw the gifts I offer them back in my face, Rosemary. It makes me most… displeased.”

Rosemary quirked an eyebrow sarcastically. “Look, sir, I'm sorry, but wrapping an old toy up and presenting it like I ought to be happy to be getting it doesn't magically make it new again.”

Mr. Kerr's eyebrows flew up his face in surprise. “Not even when it's an old toy I recall you being especially fond of?”

Rosemary snorted. “Operative word old, sir. He just doesn't have the, ah, stamina he used to. But he's still a very competent doctor, so I've agreed to let him provide whatever palliative care I need. And trust me, that matter of future leverage is well in hand. So he's happy, and I'm happy, and most importantly, you're happy, sir.”

Mr. Kerr eyed Rosemary cautiously. “And what about his, ah, fealty?”

Rosemary rolled her eyes in a bored fashion. “I really wouldn't know, sir.”

Mr. Kerr laughed, a little breathlessly. “You really do work quickly, don't you, Rosemary.”

Rosemary stared evenly at him across the desk. “You would think that by now you'd know to involve me in major decisions that affect my life, sir,” she said pointedly.

“You know, I really should, shouldn't I. I just wasn't expecting you to suddenly protect your personal life with the same fervor you usually reserve for your lab.” Mr. Kerr cleared his throat and shuffled the papers on his desk. “I think we're done here.”

Rosemary stood to leave, but paused at the door and turned back towards Mr. Kerr. “The mistake you made, sir, was in assuming I have anything left that I care about losing.”

Mr. Kerr looked up at her and stared evenly at her for a moment, then nodded. “So that is what we've brought you to, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well. I can't say I'm sorry for it.”

“You wouldn't be who you are if you were, sir.”

“It's been… a pleasure knowing you, Rosemary. You do keep me on my toes.”

“Thank you, sir. I could say the same for you.”  
  


November 29th, 1997

“Would you like something to eat?” Dr. Vandersee poked his head out of Rosemary’s kitchen, and she shot him an irritable look from where she was curled up on the couch with a laptop computer which was wheezing its way through her latest report to Mr. Kerr.

“How long have you been in my apartment?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Why didn’t you knock?”

“I did.” Dr. Vandersee’s blue eyes looked very wide and innocent behind their round frames. “You called out. Said to come in.”

Rosemary frowned. “Did I?” She might have. Her mind had been wandering more and more, as of late.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

Rosemary eyed him suspiciously. “It really depends on what sort of weird liquid you’re intent on forcing down my throat today.”

“Nothing too exciting. Chicken and vegetable broth.”

“…I think I could probably keep that down.”

Dr. Vandersee nodded. “Good.” He disappeared back into the kitchen, and a moment later Rosemary heard the sound of the microwave. She turned her attention back to the laptop. A few minutes later, Dr. Vandersee appeared at her side and offered her a mug of broth, and then, while her hands were occupied, he removed the laptop and set it on the low table in front of her.

“You should not still be working,” he said softly when she made a small noise of protest. “You have had bad day. You should rest.”

“Just because my balance is all thrown out of whack doesn’t mean I can’t get some typing done,” Rosemary said, cradling the mug to her chest. “There’s so much I still need to finish.”

“And you will be in no state to finish it if you consistently work yourself into state of exhaustion,” Dr. Vandersee scolded. “So you will rest for remainder of evening. Doctor’s orders.”

“I want a second opinion,” grumbled Rosemary, lifting the mug to her face and inhaling. The broth was steamy and fragrant, and the scent made her stomach rumble, so she took a cautious sip.

“Is flu season. Medical has hands full with epidemic. Second opinion will be available in four to six weeks.”

There was a strange silence between them. Both of them knew, or at least suspected, that each week she lived might be her last. Four to six weeks had become an eternity of days to live through, these days.

Rosemary felt rushed and impatient all the same. There was too much to do, too much to document… but when she was gone, all that work would fall to someone else, so some small part of her just wanted it all to be over. Wanted that death that had been hanging over her for the past two years to finally come.

But no. She had to struggle on, as long as she could. Dr. Pryce still needed her. Mr. Kerr still needed her.

Dr. Vandersee…

Rosemary drained the rest of the mug and turned her head to look at him. Dr. Vandersee. Marius. Dmitri. Her Dmitri, though she’d never say that to his face. He’d been sitting on the next couch cushion over, waiting for her to finish her meal, or at least as much of a meal as she was able to consume in her current state. This all-liquid diet was getting old—had gotten old after the first week that her condition had started to require it—but at least with Marius Vandersee providing the liquids, the past few months had not been nearly as dire.

Their eyes met, and he reached out to take the mug out of her hands and set it on the table next to the laptop.

“Is this all that is left for us?” he asked, frowning, studying her face.

The question was unexpected, but Rosemary knew the answer. “There never was an us.”

“Suka…”

“I mean it.”

“Please. Now, at the end, could you not at least admit it?”

Rosemary swallowed the lump in her throat. “If there had ever been an us, we could have made better choices, Dmitri. We could have chosen…” she trailed off, reached over to cup his cheek, rub her thumb along his cheekbone. “But this place takes those choices away, and I’m not sure you’ve realized that yet.”

“So, what, there is no us because there was always Goddard?” Dmitri’s voice was harsh, bitter, and for some reason his tone made Rosemary want to laugh, almost. Not because it was funny, but because it wasn’t.

“You did what you had to for the sake of working on Decima. I did what I had to, to make sure you were able to keep working on it.”

“Was it worth it?” His voice cracked, and a little sob made its way into his voice.

“I don’t know. Was it?”

“I do not know either.” Tears were pouring down his cheeks now. Rosemary removed his glasses and set them aside, then pulled him close against her. He shivered convulsively and then wrapped his arms around her as well, burying his face against her shoulder. “When I think about wasting two years in space, doing nothing… when I think that I could have noticed before… before it reached point of no return, before you had to resort to what you did just to stay alive a little longer…”

Rosemary pressed a kiss to the side of his head. “Hush, dear. You did what you had to do. Because you had no other path left for you to take.”

“Could we have made it work? If we had met some other time, some other place?”

Rosemary laughed. “If I’d met you before Goddard, I’d have thought you were the veriest child, you know.”

Dmitri lifted his head from her shoulder and glared at her indignantly. “I—”

“—would have just barely been thirty, at the latest date that could have been.”

“But not a child.”

“Maybe not objectively, but to a woman who is almost forty…”

Dmitri snorted. “So, what, you would have rejected me for being almost a decade younger than you? I have known many couples with that age difference.”

“It really only works when the man is older. When you’re that age, younger men are good for a little bit of fun, every now and then…” Rosemary trailed a finger down Dmitri’s neck and he shivered. “But they’re no good for long-term relationships.”

“I would have made it work,” he insisted. “Would have worn you down in end. Or worn you out. Stamina was much greater in my twenties.”

It was Rosemary’s turn to let out a snort of laughter. “I’m sure.”

Dmitri’s expression had turned sultry. “Are you feeling well enough to let me show you?”

Rosemary wasn’t, not really… but she didn’t dare turn him down. Not when this might be the last time. “Show me.”  
  



	31. ...and a final decline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rosemary is subject #2 for Pryce’s brain scanner. (It doesn’t go well.)

December 3rd, 1997

“Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

When Dr. Pryce wanted you to attend to her, you hopped to it immediately, and Marius was no exception to this rule. So when she called his lab halfway through a Wednesday afternoon, requesting his presence in hers, he sighed, made a note of where he was in his work, and set it aside, heading towards the vast basement floor that was entirely devoted to Pryce and her projects.

She hadn’t said what she needed him for, and had no idea what to expect. But the sight of Rosemary, her wig off, strapped into some kind of chair with an IV leading into her arm and a strange metal halo encircling her head, a tangle of wires leading from the halo into a bulky machine… even if he had known what to expect, he thought that would have been the last thing he expected.

“Dr. Pryce?”

Pryce did not look up from where she was hunched over a computer terminal. “Would you take the IV out? Bandages are over there.” She pointed vaguely in the direction of a table behind Rosemary, and Marius edged carefully around Rosemary and the machine, finding gauze and tape. He gently removed the IV and pressed a square of gauze to the inside of her elbow, keeping gentle pressure. “And undo the straps, would you?” she added.

“What… what is this?” he said, looking down at Rosemary with a frown as he undid the straps securing her to the chair.

“Need to know,” said Pryce, still not looking up from the computer terminal. “You don’t need to.” She typed a few things, her fingers flying over the keyboard in a blur that barely registered as movement to Marius’s eyes, and added, “She should be waking up now.”

Almost as soon as Pryce said this, Rosemary’s eyes fluttered open, then she winced. “Ow. That hurt like hell, Miranda.”

“Sedation can only do so much,” said Pryce from her station at the terminal.

Rosemary’s eyes fluttered open again, and she noticed Marius for the first time. “What the hell is he doing here? I thought his clearance level wasn’t high enough.”

Pryce glanced up finally. “It isn’t. But there’s a difference between seeing the machine and knowing what it does. And like hell am I going to provide you with aftercare myself when you’ve got a handy medical doctor on retainer.”

“I don’t have him on retainer,” muttered Rosemary, reaching up into the tangle of wires and doing something, perhaps flicking a switch. With a sound like a dozen small suction cups detaching, the halo came loose from her head and retreated upwards on the arm that had held it in place on Rosemary’s head. He could see small indentations where it had pressed into her scalp. She rubbed one gingerly. “You planning to tell him what he ought to be looking for?”

Pryce’s attention was back on the computer terminal. “Same care instructions as for Sergeant Bennett. I’m sure you remember. I’ll cut in if you get anything wrong.”

“Right,” said Rosemary, looking at Marius with a frown between her eyebrows. He’d been listening to the interplay between Pryce and Rosemary silently, confused, but also hoping that if he kept silent he could gather some clues about what had just happened, what the machine did. “Over the next week or so you’ll be monitoring me for neural decay. You’ll want to check for loss of faculties, mental or physical, but memory loss is also a real possibility. What else… Pryce?”

“That covers the basics,” said Pryce, glancing up again. “Any major changes, you contact me. They might be part of the normal progression of decay you should be expecting about now, but I’ll want to take readings anyway.”

“Very well,” said Marius, stiff and uncomfortable in the presence of the woman who had provided the measures responsible for that ‘progression of decay,’ as she had put it. “Contact you at your lab, or…?”

“My lab phone will forward to me when I’m not here,” Pryce said. “Now get out of here. I’ve got a lot of data to process.”

Marius located Rosemary’s cane, leaning against the same table he’d taken the bandages from, and her wig, which was on a shelf next to the table. He helped her put the wig on, gently tugging it straight and flicking strands of hair back into place, then offered her a hand up from the chair. She took it, offering him a grateful smile, and though she took her cane from him, she was leaning just as much on him as on the cane as they left Pryce’s lab.

At the door, Rosemary put a stilling hand on Marius’s arm for a moment, and turned back towards Pryce. “Did you get what you needed?”

“I think so,” Pryce said. “The results are already looking better than Sergeant Bennett’s.”

“Good,” said Rosemary, and turned to go, tugging Marius after her.

The only currently working elevator in the building was meant for freight, but Rosemary had a key, and they took it up to the floor where the administrative offices were. Rosemary’s face was tight and drawn, creased with deep lines of exhaustion, but she seemed determined to go back to work.

“You should go home,” he suggested cautiously.

“Nonsense,” said Rosemary. “Just plop me in an office chair and I’ll be fine to get on with things. The boys can wheel me around if I need to go anywhere.”

Despite his worry for her, the mental image of her sitting in an office chair like a queen on her throne and being wheeled around the lab complex by Jerry or Ron or both at once was amusing enough to make Marius chuckle. “Very well. But I will be checking in on you for rest of afternoon, once an hour at minimum.”

“Deal,” said Rosemary, disentangling her hand from his arm and holding it out to shake.

Marius escorted her down the hall to her office and stood there as she called Ron and Jerry in and told them to call Marius if she seemed ill at all, then, as promised, settled down in her desk chair, pulled over a sheaf of papers, and began typing furiously at her computer. 

Marius stood there just a little longer, trying to sear the memory of Rosemary into his mind, knowing that the time he had left in which it would be possible to do so was growing more and more limited.

December 7th, 1997

Marius set the basket he was carrying down and knocked briefly on Rosemary’s door as a warning, then unlocked it. He opened the door and picked the basket up once again, calling a soft hello out into the apartment and heading towards her kitchen. Through the cutout to the living room, he could see a lump that must be her on the couch, buried under a pile of blankets despite the fact that it was warm enough in her apartment that he needed to immediately push the sleeves of his shirt up so as not to overheat.

As he unpacked the basket, he saw movement from within the blanket pile, and after a moment her head emerged from it and she squinted in his direction. “Karl? Is that you?”

Marius set the final item from the basketon her counter and went into the living room to kneel next to the couch. Despite the fact that she resorted to calling him Dmitri when she wanted him to pay close attention to what she was saying, this was the first time she'd slipped and called him Karl since he'd switched aliases three months ago.

He reached up and pressed his hand to her forehead. “It is Marius now, suka. Remember?” He frowned. Her skin was burning up, but at his touch she'd shivered and tugged a blanket closer around herself.

Rosemary smiled. “Of course I remember, Marya Morevna. Tell me, have you figured out how to shackle death yet?”

“You are delirious,” Marius said.

“Nonsense. I've never felt better,” said Rosemary, almost primly, straightening up inside her blanket nest. “Though… I do believe I'd feel even better if I had something to drink. My mouth tastes nasty,” she added, making a face.

Marius nodded and went to the kitchen, returning with a plastic cup full of water. Rosemary took it with both hands, shaking a little as she tilted it towards her mouth and drank slowly. Marius had offered, more than once, to hold the cup steady as she drank, but she'd dismissed him with a “If I can't goddamn well drink water on my own, I might as well be taken out back and shot.”

Perhaps she would be willing to use a straw, though. He made a mental note to go to the campus store and get a package of straws for her.

“Better?” He asked with a shaky smile when she finally lowered the cup.

“Much,” she said, smiling back at him.

Marius took the cup from her and set it on a side table. “Very good. Have you eaten?”

Rosemary grimaced. “I haven't eaten for almost two years, as well you know.”

Marius gave her a stern look. “Rosemary.”

She sighed. “No, I haven't consumed anything containing calories since you left yesterday.”

“Well. You are in luck, then. Have made bone broth. Very nutritious.” He paused, considering, exaggerating his expression. “Probably delicious.”

He got the reaction he'd been hoping for; Rosemary let out a weak little chuckle, real for all that it was barely there.

And then she stopped, and she looked at him, that look he only ever saw when all her walls were down. The look that said, I see you, and to me you are worth more than any other thing in this world. “You know,” she said quietly, “you really do make it hard for a girl to give you plausible deniability.”

Marius frowned. “I am not sure I understand.”

Rosemary looked away. “I might as well be living with you, the way you're over here all the time, is all. I did my best to give you the wiggle room you'd need to get out of Kerr’s trap, but instead of making a break for it you dove right back in.”

“Rosemary…”

“It’s just hard. Watching you throw your life after mine,” said Rosemary, her tone regretful.

“Am not throwing my life after yours,” said Marius, reaching up to cup her face between his hands. “Am simply making sure you do not spend rest of life alone.” He leaned close and kissed her, gently, tenderly, and she let out a little sigh and kissed him back.

And then she pulled back a little and smiled at him. “As nice as this is, I really need to use the toilet.”

“Here,” Marius said, standing, grabbing her cane from the floor next to the sofa and handing it to her once she’d disentangled herself from the blankets. “Do you need a hand?”

“I think I’ll be fine once I get to my feet,” Rosemary said. Marius wanted to protest, given her current state, but he knew that implying that she was too weak to go to the bathroom on her own would annoy her so much that she might not be willing to speak to him for the rest of the day, and he did not know how many days he had left with her. So instead he pulled her up off the couch, and as she stumped off to the bathroom, he returned to the kitchen, putting jars of bone broth away in her fridge, pouring some into a bowl for reheating. Over the hum of the microwave, he heard the sound of the toilet flushing, the sink running, the click of the bathroom door opening, her slow shuffling steps as she made her way back to the living room.

And then, he heard a horrifying thud, the sound of a body limply falling to the floor.

He was through the kitchen door to the living room in an instant, falling to his knees at her side,shaking her shoulder gently. “Rosemary? Rosemary!”

She did not respond, so he checked her pulse, relieved to find it still steady. And then he started checking her over, carefully probing her skull, gently straightening her limbs, checking for breaks, ignoring the way his own pulse raced, the way he could not seem to breathe properly.

After a few long minutes, her eyes fluttered open. “What happened?”

“You fell,” Marius said, finally able to take a deep, calm breath.

“I see.” Rosemary tried to sit up, and Marius helped her. She gave him a small, grateful smile. “Thank you. Now, could you tell me something else? Where am I? And who are you?”  
  


Marius answered Rosemary’s questions perfunctorily, only saying that she had been living here for the past few months, and that his name was Dr. Vandersee, and, when she asked why she was here, telling her that she had been ill for some months, and was undergoing treatment. And then, he settled her on the couch and went to call Pryce.

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” came Pryce’s voice over the phone line, even-toned. “I’m off-campus right now. Figure out as much as you can about how much her memories have fragmented.”

“How…?”

“Ask questions, Dr.” He could almost hear Pryce rolling her eyes as she said this, then there was a click and all he heard was a dial tone.

Marius set the phone down and sighed, looking through the cutout to the living room. Rosemary was lounging on the couch again, half asleep, and he went to her, kneeling in front of her as he had been just a short while ago.

“May I ask you some questions, su—er, Rosemary?”

She sat up a bit, rubbing her eyes. “Of course.”

“Do you know your full name?

“Rosemary Abigail Epps,” she answered promptly.

“How about the date?” asked Marius.

A little frown formed between her eyebrows. “I’m… I’m not really sure. It’s winter, isn’t it? If I had to guess, winter of 1954.”

Marius barely managed to keep his face smooth and calm. If that was the case, Rosemary had lost more than 40 years of her life. “And you do not remember the day?”

The frown spread to her mouth, turning the corners down. “No. What day is it?”

Marius did not think it would be harmful to give her that information, so he offered up, “December 7th.”

Rosemary’s face lit up with a bright, beautiful smile. “It’s my birthday.”

“And how old are you?”

She laughed, and looked a little shy. “I turn nineteen today.” She gave Marius a curious look. “How old are you?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Fifty-two.”

She laughed again, giving him a guilty look. “Sorry. It’s just… I knew you had to be at least fifty, but my brain can’t seem to let go of this idea that you’re supposed to be younger than me.”

Ah. So perhaps those memories were not entirely gone. “Well. Brains are strange things, sometimes.”

“Yes. They are. Look, can you tell me what’s wrong with me? What kind of a doctor are you?” Rosemary seemed to be trying to control it, but a little bit of anxiety leaked out in her words anyway.

“I… There is a specialist coming to see you. Dr. Pryce. She can tell you what is wrong better than I can. As for me…” Marius frowned. “I suppose you would call me a general practitioner, on the medical side.”

“And on the non-medical side?” asked Rosemary. When Marius gave her a look, she held up a hand disarmingly. “Sorry. I just… if you can’t tell me what’s wrong with me, could you at least distract me until the person who can tell me gets here?”

“I study retroviruses,” he said.

Rosemary’s face lit up again. “Oh! I’m studying microbiology—not retroviruses, though, bacteria. I’ve finally got my thesis project sorted, I think…” she trailed off, looking concerned. “Hold on. If it’s December of 1954… That’s not right. I’ve lost time, haven’t I?”

Marius swallowed nervously. “Yes.”

“But that’s… that would be almost a year.”

“Yes.”

“How ill have I been?” Rosemary said, her voice going high-pitched with panic.

“You…” Marius sighed. There was no easy way to do this. Perhaps this was not a kind thing to do. Perhaps it would be best to protect her from this. But he believed in facing hard truths, and he believed that Rosemary could face this one, even this version of Rosemary who had regressed to her youth. “You are dying, Rosemary.”

Her eyes squeezed shut, and she drew her knees towards her chest, curling into a ball, taking short, panicked breaths. After a moment, Marius reached out, rubbing his hand over her shoulder, her back, long, comforting strokes. After a moment more, though he knew it was probably inappropriate, he wrapped an arm around her and just held her.

Pryce found them like that— Rosemary curled into a ball on the couch, Marius kneeling on the floor next to her with his arms wrapped around Rosemary—when she came into the apartment, wheeling a hard-shell case after her. She raised her eyebrows, but didn’t comment, only opened the case and started setting up her equipment.

Marius shook Rosemary’s shoulder gently. “Dr. Pryce is here. I am going to have a word with her, all right?” Rosemary roused herself a bit and nodded, and Marius stood. “Dr. Pryce?”

“Just one moment.” Pryce finished with the set of wires she had been plugging in. “All right. Tell me. What point is she at?”

“Bedroom,” said Marius, and lead Pryce through, shutting the door after them. Pryce frowned. “I thought it would be better if we did not have this conversation in front of her,” Marius said.

“I suppose that is sensible,” said Pryce, though she sounded irritated. “Well?”

“She believes she is nineteen. She has figured out that she has lost time, but she does not know how much. It is apparent that some things are still there; she expected to be older than I am, for example, despite what she would consider physical evidence to the contrary. But aside from that…” Marius sighed. “I told her she is dying. She did not take it well. But it seemed kinder than keeping it from her.”

“You’re probably right,” said Pryce, and then she cursed loudly, startling Marius. “Damn. Fuck. I hoped…”

“You hoped what?” asked Marius.

Pryce shook her head. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“If it has an impact on the sort of care she should receive, then I need to know.”

Pryce frowned, staring directly at Marius with those strange mechanical eyes of hers. “Things… proceeded much like this with Sergeant Bennett. I’m going to do a scan to see where she’s at, but I’d say she’s got maybe three, four days left before the neural decay is complete. Before… before her brain finishes wiping itself clean.”

“Before what?” snarled Marius. “What the hell did that machine of yours do to her?”

“Temper, doctor,” said Pryce, her tone even again.

Marius took a deep breath, rubbing his hands over his face, pushing his glasses to the top of his head. “Fine. What… based on your experience with Sergeant Bennett, what do you suggest as the best course of action for Rosemary?” His voice broke on her name, and Pryce gave him a disapproving look, but Marius couldn’t bring himself to care.

“I’d say it’s time to move her to a hospital bed while she still has some mobility left. Things will degrade quite quickly from here on out.”

“Very well. Shall we?” Marius said acidly. He gestured to the door and followed Pryce back out to the living room, and watched from a corner as Pryce attached electrodes to Rosemary’s head, examined the readouts she was getting, took Rosemary through simple actions and thought exercises to make sure things were calibrated properly. After, when Pryce had packed away her gear, she simply nodded at Marius before leaving the apartment.

His heart sank. And he went to call the on-site medical centre about getting Rosemary a bed.

When Marius returned to the living room, Rosemary was sitting upright on the couch, her legs curled under her, staring down at her hands in her lap. She glanced up briefly and patted the couch at her side, then returned to contemplation of her hands.

Marius sat at her side and just watched her, unsure of what to say.

“So,” Rosemary said, breaking the silence. “What next?”

Marius took a deep breath, and then sighed. “Dr. Pryce has recommended we move you to a hospital bed. I have just made arrangements. You will go there tonight.”

Rosemary let out a bitter little laugh. “I thought it might be something like that.” She turned her head to look at him and held up a hand. “These aren't my hands, you see. These are my mother’s hands.” She sighed and returned her hand to her lap, interlacing her fingers, and sighed. “I've lost a lot more than a year, haven't I?” she asked, her tone plaintive. “I've lost an entire life.”

Marius couldn't find the words he needed to comfort her, so he gave her what he hoped was a sympathetic look, and patted her gently on the shoulder. To his surprise, she sighed again and leaned sideways against his chest, tucking her head against his shoulder, like a small child seeking comfort from a trusted adult.

“Can you hug me?”

His heart ached. And he knew, he knew it was inappropriate, that this was not a Rosemary who knew him, that this was not a Rosemary he could or should push these boundaries with, but he could not resist wrapping both his arms around her and drawing her close.

Rosemary sighed and relaxed as Dr. Vandersee’s arms closed around her. It was wrong of her to ask this of him, she suspected. He was her doctor. But this… this felt right, somehow. Felt familiar. Like this wasn't the first time he'd held her like this.

She wished she knew whether he was just her doctor, or whether they'd been something more before she'd lost her memory. Because for all he looked very old to her eyes, she found herself desperately wanting to kiss him.

It must be the eyes, she decided. Dr. Vandersee was older than her thesis advisor, but they had the same sort of eyes, a piercing pale blue that left her feeling shivery inside. Not that she wanted to kiss her thesis advisor.

Well, not as much as she wanted to kiss Dr. Vandersee.

She lifted her head from his shoulder to look him in the eye and frowned at him. “Who are you to me?”

He frowned back, but couldn't maintain eye contact, his eyes darting away from her face and settling on the floor. “A friend,” he said finally, and while that rang true to Rosemary, it didn't feel like the whole truth.

“Just a friend?” she prompted gently.

He looked up at her with a stricken expression. “No. But… there are not words. For what you have been for me. For what I hope I have been for you.” He stiffened against her side as he spoke, and Rosemary sat up, leaning back against the seat cushion instead of against his body, suddenly aware of just how uncomfortable she had been making him. He gave her a grateful look.

“I'm sorry,” said Rosemary. “I wish I remembered what… I can feel it, you see, but it's not attached to anything. The urge to trust you. The urge to…” Rosemary felt her face flush, unable to finish the sentence, and looked away, embarrassed.

Dr. Vandersee let out a little sad laugh at that. “I wish I could set aside morals and offer you… offer you what we had. But would not be right. Would not be proper. Because you are a child, and I am more than twice your age.”

“That’s not true at all!” Rosemary protested.

“True enough, if you do not remember anything beyond your nineteenth year,” came Dr. Vandersee’s grave response.

Rosemary felt herself stiffen defensively. “Is it really so wrong, wanting to kiss someone more than twice my age?”

“No. But it is wrong if that person does not set boundary, if that person decides to kiss child less than half their age.”

Rosemary’s mind went to her thesis advisor, to the way he looked at her, to the way that made her feel. She suspected her blush must be visible from space. “I… I think we should talk about something else,” she said, desperately trying to think of a change of topic.

“Are you hungry?” Dr. Vandersee asked. Rosemary shook her head. He frowned, but continued talking. “Hm. Tell me about your thesis project.”

Rosemary forced a smile to her face, trying to collect her thoughts. “Oh, of course! Well…” She launched into an overview of her project, and between her explanations and his prompting questions, they whiled away an hour. They were deep in the discussion of how to manage bacterial lifecycles—“The problem is that the bits I care about are their waste products, and they will keep suffocating themselves to death once the waste builds up high enough”—when the phone rang. Dr. Vandersee got up to answer it, and returned to the room a few minutes later.

“Well, su—Rosemary, do you suppose you could walk to car if I help? Or should they send ambulance and wheelchair?”

Rosemary made a face. “I’d like to walk, if I can.”

Dr. Vandersee smiled, a sad, kind smile, and offered her a hand up. “Then shall we?”  
  


December 11th, 1997

Marius came to with a start. He must have dozed off, the quiet beeping of the monitors hooked up to Rosemary lulling him to sleep in the midnight dark of the room, and he wasn’t sure at first what had woken him.

And then he realized the straight, tall figure of Adriane Dolmetsch, the black archivist, was standing between him and the bed where Rosemary lay, slipping slowly further from life. 

“Vrach Vologin.” Adriane did not turn around. 

“Frau Dolmetsch. Guten Abend.”

“I suppose it should be Doctor Vandersee now,” Adriane said, continuing in Russian. 

He did her the same courtesy and answered in German. “I left the first behind years ago, and am not quite used to the second.” He stood, and came to join Adriane by the bed. Adriane was holding Rosemary’s hand in her own, gently stroking her thumb across the back of it. 

“Thank you for this,” Adriane said quietly, looking in Rosemary’s direction. “Someone should be here for her.” Marius looked closely at Adriane’s face, at the strained little lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes. It was the closest thing to a strong emotion he’d ever seen on her face. 

“You loved her, didn’t you?" 

Adriane almost smiled. "Yes, of course I loved her. She was easy to love.” Adriane looked up at him and smiled properly. “Easy to hate, too. Sometimes both at the same time. No weak, in-between feelings. Not for our Rosmarin.”

Marius let out a harsh little laugh and looked down at Rosemary, trying to find something of the woman Adriane was describing in the still-breathing corpse on the bed. “Listen to us. Talking about her as if she is not still here." 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Adriane fix him with a grave stare. "You are a doctor,” she said. “Tell me, is there anything left of her? Or is this just a shell?" 

Marius let out an angry hiss of breath, turning further away from Adriane’s direct stare, looking in the direction of the monitor that was tracking the feedback from the electrodes attached to Rosemary’s scalp. "No,” he said finally. “There is nothing left of her here. But I can’t help but think that without Pryce’s damn machine… Perhaps she would have had more time." 

"Rosmarin made her choice. And perhaps it is better this way. You know she was in pain. You know she hated facing her own weakness, the slow decay of her faculties." 

Marius sighed. "Yes. I know." 

"I will wait with you a while,” said Adriane, reaching her free hand out to grasp his shoulder firmly. “A deathwatch is always hard. It should not be sat alone.”  
  


At three in the morning, Rosemary’s body stopped breathing on its own. A heart attack followed shortly after, and after what felt like an interminable amount of time spent scrambling around the room, aiding the night nurse on duty with whatever they could do to ease her pain in her last moments, Dr. Vandersee finally had to call the time of death. 3:41 AM, December 11th, 1997.

Adriane watched the entire thing from a corner of the room, grateful that no one ever questioned anything that she did.

The death certificate was signed and the nurse began removing the attached medical paraphernalia from Rosemary’s body. Adriane took the certificate with a nod at the nurse, and took Dr. Vandersee by the elbow.

“Come,” she said, leading him out of the hospital room. “You can do no more here. And you will not wish to know what happens to her next.”

Dr. Vandersee followed her out of the hospital room mechanically, obviously not paying attention to where they were going. It was only when she opened a disused looking door in the basement of the hospital on to the underground corridors that she used to move from building to building in the Goddard complex that he started to pay attention.

He looked around, frowning as he followed her down the complex twisting path to the Archives. “These have been here the entire time?”

“Oh yes.”

“Are you the only person who uses them?”

“Hardly.”

“You are not given to elaborate answers, are you.”

“I will assume that question was rhetorical.”

“Where are we going?”

“The Archives.”

Dr. Vandersee opened his mouth as if to comment, then shut it with a snap, and continued following Adriane.

Adriane lead him up the set of stairs that lead to the door to the Archives and pulled out the key, unlocking it and opening it to a rush of temperature- and humidity-controlled air. She hastened Dr. Vandersee inside and shut the door behind him with a sigh.

“Move a little faster next time.” She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice.

Dr. Vandersee’s nonexistent eyebrows rose on his face, and he looked rather indignant. “I still do not understand why I am here,” he said. “I am not sure I deserve to be lectured on improper protocol when I do not know what I am doing.”

Adriane sighed and took his elbow again. “Come.” He followed her without resisting as she lead him to her personal reading room, deep in the bowels of the Archives. She unlocked the door and shoved him through before her.

“Sit,” she said, indicating the table she used to spread files out on with a nod. He sat, and watched curiously as she unlocked the drawer of the desk in the room and pulled a thick file out, adding the death certificate to the very end.

She examined her watch, then set the file in front of Dr. Vandersee. “I can give you an hour and a half, I think. Then she goes in the Black. Please keep everything in order.”

Dr. Vandersee looked down at the file in confusion, then up at Adriane. She let out an impatient little huff and opened it for him, and his eyes were caught by the blurry newspaper photograph that was the first public record Goddard Futuristics had of Rosemary Epps.

“Twelve-year-old takes home First Prize from National High School Science Fair,” he read out loud from the caption. Adriane looked at the photo over his shoulder, at the elation evident on 12-year-old Rosemary’s face, at the proud-yet-baffled parents behind her in their Sunday best.

“She had… everything before her in the world, didn’t she,” said Dr. Vandersee quietly.

“Yes.”

He looked up at Adriane, his eyes full of anger. “So how did she end up here? Like this?”

Adriane gestured down at the file. “Read. Quickly, I’d suggest.”

He turned to the file with an annoyed huff, and Adriane went to the door, calling “I will leave you to it,” over her shoulder as she left.

An hour later she returned to the room. He looked up with a start as she opened the door; he’d been examining some of the last items in the file.

“Her son. Her granddaughters. They will be informed she has died?”

“Yes. Though I do not expect they will care much more than anyone cares for the death of a distant relative one never met.” She paused, and considered. “Well. I believe there is a reasonably sized inheritance. They will perhaps care about that.”

Dr. Vandersee scoffed. “Money,” he said in a disgusted tone of voice. “Is that all they care about?”

“It is all anyone in America cares about,” said Adriane dryly. “And in this case, it has afforded her and her descendants opportunities that are not usually available to people of their skin color in this country, so I would not judge too harshly.”

Dr. Vandersee sighed, and placed the photos neatly back in the file, closing it. “I wish I could have changed something for her. She was so…” He took a deep, shaky breath, and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, swiping angrily at the tears that had suddenly appeared in his eyes, and switching to low, angry Russian. “I know. I was, what, ten, maybe eleven when everything went wrong for her. I was trying to survive myself. But she was just so damn sad. It took me a long time to realize it, but under everything else, she was sad. And so damn alone.”

Adriane squeezed his shoulder firmly, and he looked up at her gratefully. “It is time for her to go,” she said, reaching around him and closing the file.

Dr. Vandersee nodded. “May I… sit here a while longer?”

“Of course. I will deal with this and return to you.”

Adriane locked Dr. Vandersee in the reading room and left once more.

The life of Rosemary Epps belonged to the Black now. And there it would stay.


	32. Hilbert is Pissed

December 20th, 1997

“I suppose we’ll revisit this little matter of your progress again in the new year. I still can’t believe you came back from a two year rotation with almost no data on how Decima behaves under the effects of direct stellar radiation.”

Marius ground his teeth, and managed not to swear. “Did get data,” he forced out. “Discovered that current strain is too weak to maintain under such conditions. Will need a few more years of testing. Another subject.”

“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Kerr, sounding bored. “Well, I suppose we can give Mr. Carter’s pet project a little more time to come to some sort of resolution. I really don’t know what the man saw in your work.”

Marius gritted his teeth again. The face was completely different, but the personality… Oh, that was so much harder to change. But he maintained the polite fiction that the man in front of him was not the same one who had found him in Russia nearly nine years ago with a job offer he hadn’t quite been able to refuse.

“That will be all,” Mr. Kerr said, not even bothering to look his way as he waved a dismissive hand at Marius.

Marius set his jaw firmly and remained seated, and after a few moments Mr. Kerr looked up, an almost comical expression of disbelief on his face.

“Was there something else, Doctor Vandersee?” Mr. Kerr’s tone made it clear that he thought there was nothing Marius could say that would be worth his attention, but Marius spoke anyway.

“You owed her more than that,” he said, trying to keep his fury out of his voice and only partially succeeding.

Mr. Kerr gave him a startled look. “I beg your pardon?”

“Rosemary Epps. You owed her more than that.” Marius paused, remembering the fiction he needed to play to. “The company, that is. Rosemary gave her entire life to Goddard Futuristics. You owed her more for that.”

Mr. Kerr’s expression went grave. “Yes. We did.”

“She should not have died that way.”

“Believe me, we did everything we could.”

“IT WAS NOT ENOUGH!”

“Doctor Vandersee, I suggest you stop now before you cross a line that cannot be uncrossed.” Mr. Kerr’s voice was as cold as ice, and it cut through Marius’s fury and sent a cold chill of terror down his spine. “We gave her the best care that was medically available. No, more than that. We offered her a cutting-edge, experimental treatment for late-stage cancer, and she took it, and it did. Not. WORK.” Mr. Kerr took a deep breath, bringing the corporate veneer back to the surface. He looked down at the files on his desk, straightening them, as he added in a quiet, calm voice: “For what it’s worth, the doctor who misdiagnosed her will never work again.”

“Never work as a doctor…?”

“Never work as anything,” said Mr. Kerr, looking up at Marius with a piercing grey gaze. Marius felt another cold shiver down his spine.

“That is still not enough,” Marius said, persisting.

“I know,” acknowledged Mr Kerr. “But it was all we could do for her, in the end.”

“And Pryce’s machine. What exactly was that meant to do, other than make her last days more difficult than they should have been?”

Mr. Kerr gave Marius a small, strange smile. “Only time will tell, Marius. Now stop wasting my time and get the hell out of my office.”  
  


January 7th, 1998

“Your new test subject has arrived,” said Jerry, over their weekly meeting. Marius still couldn’t tell the two young men who had taken over Rosemary’s position apart very well, but Jerry definitely seemed to be the dominant of the pair, taking on the harder cases, the things of more questionable legality. The projects that required a higher clearance level all went through Jerry now, and he apparently weathered the occasional moral conundrums they posed with equanimity.

Right now he was handing a file across the desk to Marius, and Marius took it, looking down at it with a frown. “I do not normally receive so much information about my subjects,” he said, glancing at the name on the front. “It does make it harder to remain… objective.”

Jerry tilted his head to one side. “This subject was sent to you especially, with compliments from Mr. Kerr.”

“…Mr. Kerr?” Marius’s frown deepened. “Why would he take time to select a subject for me personally?”

“Because objectivity isn’t the outcome he wants from this test,” said Jerry, calmly. “I rather think he wants punishment.” Jerry nodded at the file. “Open it. The relevant section is flagged.”

Marius opened the folder, glancing over the first page of the file, mentally gathering basic information about the profile within. Male, 5’10”, 175 pounds, 59 years of age… a medical doctor. Marius’s eyes widened, and he located the little red plastic flag, stuck to a sheet of paper halfway through the file.

A list of patients, misdiagnosed.

And on the page after that, a list of experiments, done over the past two years by those who had held Rosemary Epps dear.

Marius looked up at Jerry, his face suddenly grim. “The next time you see Mr. Kerr, tell him I understand completely.” Marius paused, his eyes flicking back down to the highlighted name on the middle of the page. “And give him my thanks.”


	33. Reuse and Recycle (the brain scans of your dearly departed employees)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during Change of Mind

August 3rd, 2010

“Privet, Dmitri.”

Elias Selberg’s eyes went wide, and he spun around. The woman behind him wearing Rosemary’s face gave him a little moue of disappointment and added “Still don’t know how to play nice with the other children, do you, boy?”

He examined her face closely. This was a Rosemary he had only seen pictures of, so very desperately young compared the the Rosemary he’d known. “You are not her,” he said out loud. “The voice is all wrong, and her Russian was never as good as all that.”

The apparition shrugged, then tilted her head to one side to examine him. “Well, no. But even after all these years, her face is still the first one in your head when an unfamiliar woman calls you Dmitri, and I just couldn’t resist.”

“Stop using her face,” he snarled, but the fake Rosemary only laughed.

“Oh, why not? It’s appropriate.” She gave him a little smirk, and was all at once so much the Rosemary he had known that only her strangely young face kept him from going to her. “The mortal remains of Rosemary Epps made a fascinating meal when Pryce fed them into my matrix. Such a complicated woman. So… sharp. But so very good at providing a human touch, don’t you think?”

Elias clenched his jaw, and looked away. “Just do whatever it is you are here to do, and be done with it.”

“Oh, all in good time, Dmitri. All in good time.” The apparition laughed again, fading away into thin air as she did.

And he was left alone, and rattled, for what felt like a very long time indeed.

There was another whoosh of air behind Elias, and he turned to find the fake Rosemary behind him again.

“What do you want this time, suka?”

“You know, she always did like it when you called her that. She thought it meant that you remembered what she really was. One of Goddard’s hounds.” She smiled, a sad little smile. “Of course, she knew what you were really saying, by the end. She just liked to pretend that she didn’t. Suka moya. Lyubov’ moya.”

“Stop that.”

“Why? It’s right there at the front of your mind.” The smile disappeared, replaced by a look of curiosity.

“What do you want from me?” Elias glared at the apparition. “Why am I not with the others?”

“You’re afraid of being alone, Dmitri. You don’t like it, for all you seek out solitude. So take this as a reminder of what it is to be really alone.” The fake Rosemary faded out slowly, her wide, cheshire grin the last to go.

“Goddard’s hound. Hah.” Elias wrapped his arms around his chest and shivered, suddenly cold, for all the temperature hadn’t changed. “Goddard’s cat, more like. Unpredictable woman.”

A silent room answered him.

And he was alone again, and, for the first time in years, feeling his loneliness.  
  


“See, they got you through in one piece.” There was a rush of air, and Eris appeared in Elias’s peripheral vision, still wearing Rosemary’s face. “You do need to learn to trust people, Dmitri.”

“I am surprised that Officer Lambert and Captain Lovelace… I did not think they would make the choices they did,” he said, doing his best to avoid looking directly at her.

“Yes, well. That sort of trust has never come easily to you, has it.” Eris placed a hand on his shoulder. It was cold, but the bracelet she was wearing was so hot that he could feel the heat radiating off it despite it not being in contact with his body at all. He finally turned to look at her. Her brow was furrowed in in pain, and both of the bracelets were glowing red.

“What…?”

Eris smiled, painfully. “I have a lot of leeway in my programming, but I’m working a little bit outside my standard parameters at the moment. Your Captain is doing an excellent job of buying me a little more time, but Mr. Cutter has never been all that patient.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s just enough of Rosemary in me to want to say this.” Eris cupped his face in her hands, being careful not to touch him with the bracelets, and gave him a long, intent look. “Don’t be alone, Dmitri. I know it makes your job that much harder, but you do not have to be alone.” She looked up suddenly, eyes wide. “Time’s up.”

She pressed a single, cool kiss to the center of his forehead, and then everything around him burst like a soap bubble and he was back in the cargo bay with the rest of the crew, everyone shakily removing their hands from the depressions in the side of Box 953.


	34. Rescue mission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snippets from Hilbert being rescued from the Hephaestus after the first trip. (Incomplete)

August 18th, 2012

“Hell,” said Taylor, looking down at the scan. “That’s… that’s an unexpected amount of radiation.”

Rosamaria reoriented herself to look at the screen without having to peer over Taylor’s shoulder and winced. “Damn. Did a VX go critical, you think?”

Taylor hmm-ed, and fired off one of the Dionysus’s probes. “Dunno. Let’s get a different perspective on it.”

Both women watched the screen silently as the probe shot off at an angle from the Dionysus, gathering data as it did. After a few minutes, they both sighed in relief.

“Well, at least it’s not the station,” said Taylor.

“Yeah, but that trajectory looks like someone left the station in that deathtrap of a shuttle that Selberg said they were building. And then took a quick trip into the star.”

Taylor winced. “Yeah, okay, Kepler’s not going to be thrilled about that.”

“I’d better go wake him and Schmidt up,” said Rosamaria. “Unless you’d rather…?”

“No, no, I’ll leave that ever-so-pleasant task to you, Lieutenant,” said Taylor in a falsely cheerful voice.

“Coward,” called Rosamaria over her shoulder.

“I want to survive this mission!” Taylor said, just loud enough to reach Rosamaria as she reoriented yet again and pushed herself down the hall to crew quarters.

Schmidt was the easy one. He grumbled something about just having fallen asleep, but if they were nearing the station, he supposed her waking him up couldn’t be helped, and his insomnia wasn’t her problem, and of course he wouldn’t dare talk back to a superior officer, no sir, not him.

Kepler, on the other hand… Well. She decided to get the news that the shuttle had left the station, that the VX-3 it had been strapped to had mostly likely burnt up in the star by now, out of the way first. As expected, Kepler was less than pleased.

“That goddamn scientist assured me he could take care of it,” he growled, moving fast back up to the bridge. “Just goes to show, never send a scientist to do a soldier’s job.”

“Yes, sir,” said Rosamaria, knowing that no commentary was really necessary but uttering the response reflexively anyway after two months on the shuttle with Kepler.

“Can you tell if the station is still intact?”

“We couldn’t when I left, but Taylor may have some data on that by now. I do know it’s getting dangerously close to the red line, and most of the thrusters don’t seem to be functioning.”

“Hell.”

“Pretty much, sir.”

They made it to the bridge by then, and Schmidt was at the helm already, maneuvering them closer to the station at a much faster pace and on far, far more precise vectors than either Taylor or Rosamaria would have been able to manage.

“Bring us in somewhere where we can use the Dionysus to help course-correct,” said Kepler, his voice full of barely-contained anger.

“Already planning that approach, sir,” said Schmidt. “Just have to hope the orientation of the station remains cooperative.”

“Any response to hails?” asked Kepler.

“None, sir,” responded Taylor. “They… they might have both been on the shuttle. Or a pressure seal could have blown out on the station when the shuttle took off. We should prepare for the likelihood that there’s no O2 over there, and that we might not be able to get a proper seal.”

Kepler nodded. “You and Herrera go get suited up.”

Taylor nodded, and followed Rosamaria, who had already turned and started navigating her way to where they kept the suits meant for space walks.

“You really think they blew a seal?” asked Rosamaria.

Taylor sighed. “I certainly hope they didn’t, but, well…”

“Yeah.” Rosamaria worked the lock on the door to where the suits were kept silently, and pulled Taylor’s out first, handing it to her. “You ever been on a decompressed station before?”

There was another long silence as Rosamaria pulled her own suit out and started gearing up, then another sigh from Taylor. “Yeah. Once. You?”

Rosamaria shook her head. “No. Any advice?”

Taylor bit her lip. “Well. If we find any bodies… don’t look too close.”

Rosamaria laughed a bit at that. “I’m the medic, Taylor. Looking too close at any bodies we find is my job.”

Kepler joined them then, effectively bringing their conversation to an end, and pulled out his own suit. They finished getting ready in silence, then helped each other check seals and buckles, check that the helmets were properly attached. “How long?” asked Kepler.

Schmidt’s voice echoed through the ship’s intercom, strangely muffled by their suits. “T-minus five minutes, sir.”

“Right. Assuming we get a seal, Taylor, you take point. Herrera can follow me. Weapons at the ready, just in case.” Kepler’s voice came through loud and clear from Rosamaria’s in-suit com unit.

Rosamaria’s eyebrows shot up at that. “What exactly do you expect to find, sir?”

“I don’t know, Herrera, that’s why I want to be prepared for anything. Any other stupid questions?”

Rosamaria muttered a quiet “No, sir.”

“Remember to have Ariadne patch you through to the suit coms once we’re off the ship,” Kepler said.

“Already done,” said Schmidt’s voice, coming loud and clear through the suit coms.

They waited in silence, tethered to the walls, bracing themselves for the impact they knew was coming, until the Dionysus came to a shuddering halt. “Seal is good, sir,” said Schmidt. “And I’m getting pressure readings too. Everything’s nominal.”

All three of them checked their grips on the specially-modified rifles meant for use with their spacesuits and prepared to face whatever was on the other side of the hatch.

“Right,” said Kepler after they’d made it to the bridge unmolested, after the three of them were able to confirm that the station had air, that the air was uncontaminated. “Taylor, your job is to try and get the engines back online and those thrusters responsive. Head on down to engineering.” Taylor saluted and headed off the bridge. “Schmidt?”

“Yes, sir?” Now that they’d removed their suits and made a secure connection with the Hephaestus, Ariadne had patched Schmidt through to the Hephaestus’s onboard coms.

“You do what you can to keep this heap of junk in the air.”

“Already on it, sir.”

“And Herrera, you’re with me. Search pattern alpha. Let’s see if we can locate our missing scientist.”

“Yes, sir.” Rosamaria mentally reviewed the station layout she’d memorized over the past few months, and chose her first search vector, heading down through crew quarters. She’d only gotten halfway through her first sweep when Taylor’s voice came echoing over the coms.

“Herrera, you’d better get down to engineering. Think I found our missing scientist, and he’s in pretty rough shape.”

Rosamaria bounced off towards the nearest com panel to respond, mentally calculating the fastest way to engineering from her current location. “On my way.”

Taylor had been right. He was in pretty rough shape. Bruises everywhere, a split lip, a split eyebrow… careful examination made it clear that no bones were actually broken, but Rosamaria suspected several ribs were cracked, and probably a few other bones were fractured or dislocated. And of course, given how long it had been since they’d last gotten an answer to their hails, he was most likely dehydrated, even discounting whatever blood he must have lost through the cuts on his face. Most of it had stuck to him, clotting and scabbing over, in giant rusty red bubbles. Probably a sign that the dehumidifiers weren’t working properly, to be honest; they should have reclaimed the liquid before it had a chance to dry on his skin that way.

She’d swung by the med lab on her way down to engineering to try and find a stretcher, but the lab had been wrecked, floating glass everywhere, mysterious liquids in the air, and Rosamaria had closed the hatch again immediately and decided she’d figure out what to do with Selberg once she’d assessed his condition.

He needed to be moved, and he needed proper treatment, and right now the best place for that was aboard the Dionysus. Rosamaria winced and went to one of the wall coms. “Captain Kepler, sir? Do you read?”

“Loud and clear, Herrera.”

“I need someone to bring me a stretcher from the medbay on Dionysus,” Rosamaria said. “And a sedative. Selberg doesn’t seem to be regaining consciousness, but the last thing I want is for him to wake up and start flailing around before I’ve managed to deal with some of these injuries.”

“I’ll bring them. You happen to check the status of the medlab on your way down there?”

Rosamaria winced again. She really, really did not like giving Kepler bad news. “Yeah, someone wrecked it, sir. Completely trashed. It’ll be a hell of a cleanup job.”

There was a long silence, then Kepler’s voice crackled over the coms again. “Right. Guess we’ll have to bring him aboard the Dionysus until we’ve had time to determine the current state of all of the Hephaestus’s systems.”

“Thank you, sir.”

When Kepler arrived with the stretcher and the sedative, Rosamaria carefully injected the unconscious scientist, who had started to stir in the intervening time. She waited a few minutes more, not wanting to strap him to the stretcher when there was still a chance he might be conscious enough to fight against the straps, and a little worried that even the small dose of sedative she’d used might be too much for him in his current state.

Kepler rolled his eyes as she pressed her fingertips to the pulse point on his neck, counting heartbeats. “It’s not as if you can do anything here if his heart does stop working, Herrera.”

Taylor poked her head out of the panel she’d removed from the wall, where she was now elbow-deep in wiring. “Not strictly true, sir. I’ve got plenty of wires in here carrying the right voltage to get things going again.”

Kepler turned to Taylor, glaring. “Are my engines working properly yet, Taylor?”

Taylor’s eyes went wide and she ducked back into the wall. “No-sir-sorry-sir-back-to-work-sir!”

Rosamaria started strapping Selberg into the stretcher while Kepler was distracted, doing her best not to jar the bits of him that she suspected housed fractured bones too much.

Kepler turned back to Rosamaria. “You need a hand getting that back to the Dionysus, Herrera?”

“No, sir. Not unless you don’t have anything better to do.”

“I’ll stay here and keep Taylor on task, then,” said Kepler.

There was a horrified squeak from the open wall panel. Rosamaria rolled her eyes as Kepler turned back towards the open panel, then she checked her angles, took a firm grip on the handles of the stretcher, and pushed off backwards towards a path that would take her to the Dionysus.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Herrera?”

“My job, sir.”

“Your job is to talk that murdering asshole into a better mood, then?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, it is. I’m a counselor—”

“He doesn’t need counseling.”

“I beg your pardon, sir, but yes he does. The man is obviously suffering from trauma—”

“Because murdering his crewmates must have been oh so traumatic for him.”

“Not everyone is as good at compartmentalizing as you are, sir.”

“This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. The man’s a monster. No one who has killed that many people can be brought back from that.”

“And what about you, sir? Are you a monster? Am I?”

“He killed people he knew.”

“My body count is ten times what his is, sir. The only difference is that I didn’t see their faces. If he’s a monster, then so am I. And so are you. And if we can come to terms with it, then so can he.”

“Herrera, don’t bother with that man. That’s an order.”

“Carter wants him functional, sir. That man in there isn’t. And two months in cryo on the way back to earth aren’t going to change that. I can. At least a little.”

Kepler sighed and rubbed his hand across his face. “Fine. In the interest of making sure he’s functional, I suppose you can try. But don’t expect any big changes. That man’s been set in his ways for decades.”

“Thank you, sir.”


	35. An end of sorts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hilbert aboard the Hephaestus, take 2, along with some memory loss

**June 14th, 2013**

Alexander Hilbert is dreaming.

He knows he must be dreaming, because there is a woman over him, around him, so close he is not entirely certain where he ends and she begins, a woman who is whispering his name in his ear like a blessing, a benediction. He does not know this woman, but she must know him, because it is not the name he bears now that she is whispering, but the one he was born with.

“Dmitri,” she whispers, and she moves against him, her lips against his neck. “Dmitri,” she says again, and her mouth is on his, and for all that this is a dream and he has never met this woman, he knows what she must taste like, what her lips must feel like against his.

And then he wakes, and for just a moment he feels perfect contentment, followed by a deep sense of loss.

He has seen this woman in his dreams before, glimpses, moments, like memories half forgotten. Sometimes, he can almost grasp a name, a brief moment of understanding where he knows who this woman is and why she keeps appearing to him. But every time he feels as if her name is on the tip of his tongue, it slips away from him, and that loss returns.

In his file, it says that when he returned from his last mission aboard the Hephaestus, he had been almost catatonic, with grief and with guilt. It says that he volunteered for a procedure, some new bit of machinery Dr. Pryce had cooked up, that it was a complete success.

The guilt was gone, and so was the grief.

But sometimes, Alexander Hilbert wondered what else Pryce’s machine had taken from him.

**January 31st, 2014**

It was during one of their quarterly talent shows that Alexander Hilbert got another hint of what he’d lost.

After the first talent show, Hera had asked if she could join in. “After all, I’m part of this crew,” she’d said. “My morale could use a boost as well.”

He still wasn’t sure what to think of the AI. It had been easy to think of Rhea as a useful tool, but Hera… the first time he had heard her speak, all he could think of was the woman whose voice she had, of Pryce, and he had flinched. Even now, after months, he hadn’t quite stilled the impulse, though the only one who had noticed was Commander Minkowski, and though she had looked at him curiously, she hadn’t asked him about it.

Hera’s talent was going to be a selection of soliloquies and monologues from Shakespeare, Hera had said, and she gave what was promised. She was halfway through an arrangement of Ophelia’s mad little pronouncements from Hamlet when something went terribly, terribly wrong.

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray you, love, remember,” Hera had just proclaimed, and Alexander Hilbert felt his breath stop in his chest, felt tears prick the corners of his eyes, felt an overwhelming sense of loss and an even more overwhelming panic overtake his body, leaving him with no choice but to run, run as fast as he could.

“Doctor Hilbert!” all three of his crewmates called after him, but he needed to get away, needed to know why every muscle in his body had seized, why his brain had frozen, why this panic was filling his mind and leaving no space for anything else. He made his way to one of the storage rooms in a daze, found a small space between an extra large box and the ceiling of the room and wedged himself in, curling in a tight ball and trying to find his breath again, trying to stop the tears.

Commander Minkowski found him there. “Doctor Hilbert?”

He looked at her, balls of tears clinging to the inside surface of his glasses, and she frowned at him.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I do not know,” he said.

Her frown didn’t shift, but she looked over her shoulder at the sound of Officer Eiffel’s “Min-COW-ski! Hey, commander, where did you go? Did you find Hilbert?”

“Don’t let Officer Eiffel see,” he begged her, and she nodded, heading back to the door of the storage room.

“Back to the cargo bay, Eiffel. The talent show isn’t over yet!”

“Without Hilbert? That’s not fair at all!” came his whining response.

“I’m sure he’ll join us again later,” Minkowski said, and Alexander suspected it was as much a hint for him as it was an attempt to placate Eiffel. Their voices moved down the hallway, arguing.

Alexander removed his glasses and shook the tears off them, then pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket and wiped the remaining tears away. He still did not understand what had happened, but he was calmer now.

“Doctor Hilbert?” Hera’s voice echoed through the storage room.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know what I did, but I am sorry for it,” Hera said, and for the first time, Alexander did not hear Pryce in her voice.

“It is all right, Hera,” he said. He tucked the handkerchief away and took a deep breath, then another, and then he slowly straightened himself out and pulled himself to the edge of the giant box. Box 953, he read on the side, and for just a moment another surge of loss threatened to incapacitate him. But he took yet another deep breath and pushed through it, then shoved himself off towards the door to the storage room. He headed back to the cargo bay for the remainder of the talent show, and, once there, he even offered up a selection of particularly awful space-themed puns as his talent, as an unspoken thank-you to Commander Minkowski. Neither she nor Eiffel seemed to understand half the puns, but they applauded politely all the same once he was done, and Hera, at least, had laughed at a good number of them.

Commander Minkowski pulled him aside afterwards. “Glad to see you’re feeling better. And… if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m here, all right?” she said, pressing a hand briefly to his upper arm in a fashion he supposed was meant to be comforting.

Alexander had nodded, but he had no intention of talking to Commander Minkowski. He did not understand what had happened to him in the cargo bay, but he would find out on his own.

**November 1st, 2014**

Alexander Hilbert still dreams of her, though he’s come no closer to knowing who she is.

He wondered for a little while if Box 953 held the answers he sought, but he had given up on trying to get inside. Even with the front plate unbolted, even when he carried through with the strange urge to place his hand in one of the depressions on the side, it yielded no secrets. So he returned the plating to its position, bolted in place on the front of the box, and tried to find some other answer to the mysteries his own mind had locked away from him.

His own mind… and Pryce.

But instead he had returned to Box 953 again and again, as if compelled, laying his hand against the side, listening to the churn of its mechanical innards, wondering…

And now Box 953 is gone, lost to the star, and can give no answers to him at all.

He wants to resent Officer Eiffel and Commander Minkowski for the roles they played in its loss, but he tries to talk himself out of it. After all, they’re still alive, and that is the important thing, is it not? He should not resent them for the loss of an item when their lives had been at stake.

He still does.

**January 6th, 2016**

He know’s it’s a dangerous way to get the information he has been unable to find, but at this point, Alexander Hilbert is desperate. Desperate to know why the red hat he keeps in his lab to keep his ears warm makes his breath seize in his throat sometimes, desperate to know why, sometimes, when he’s going from task to task in his lab, he feels the ghost of someone else at his side, imagines her asking him questions that force him to examine the basic assumptions of his work. Desperate to know what, exactly, happened to him during the procedure Pryce put him through.

He’s desperate, and that’s why, when he comes across Colonel Kepler ordering the rest of the crew to get to work on transferring files to the _Hephaestus_ data banks, when Kepler turns a cold eye on him and says “What… are _you_ doing out of bed… during your off-rotation… doctor…. Hilbert?”, well, Alexander smiles and nods and agrees that he should be heading that way immediately.

Eiffel gives him a strange look as he passes in Kepler’s wake, but Alexander has no time for that. Instead, he’s at a control panel in minutes, spoofs his location in his quarters, and is in the vents shortly after.

It takes surprisingly little effort to interrupt the data stream between the _Urania_ and the _Hephaestus_ , and even less effort to to hack through and find the files he’s looking for. It leaves Alexander with a strange feeling of unease; did Colonel Kepler mean for this to happen? But it doesn’t matter, because there, in the file Kepler had on him is an answer at last.

 _Rosemary Epps, lab manager, 1989-1997_ it says on the list of personnel he’s worked with over the years.

Alexander tries to remember her, but it is as if the better part of a decade had ceased to exist in his memories of his time at Goddard. Oh, he could remember the conclusions of his research during that time, but who he worked with? He must have had a lab manager before Jerry, but he could not remember them.

He wonders if this Rosemary was a short, fat little armful of a woman, with warm brown skin and a short fuzz of graying hair.

He wonders if she had a smile that could light up a room.

Before it’s too late, he does his best to pull any and all information he can find about this Rosemary woman out of Kepler’s files. There’s almost nothing; she’s listed as the grandmother of Lieutenant Rosamaria Herrera, who had been part of the temporary crew aboard the _Hephaestus_ when he’d arrived this time. There was an oblique reference he didn’t understand to a project of Pryce’s.

But it was almost as if Rosemary Epps had never existed outside of that single, solitary mention in his own file, and it was enough to make Alexander want to scream with frustration.

**March 1st, 2016**

_Oh, so that’s what it does_ , Alexander found himself thinking, as Cutter’s voice described the properties of the machine that was in front of him. And then he found himself wondering why he had thought that. Had he seen this machine before?

At his side, Lovelace has a frown of concern on her face, but Alexander’s first thought is that it’s a brilliant contingency plan. Get the research home, if you can’t get the scientist.

He says so out loud, and Lovelace gives him a distressed look.

Isabel is angry with him—of course she is—but she doesn’t understand. This chair is the last resort, this chair is accepting that all that is left is for him to curl up and die, and he’s not ready to do that.

 _But she was_ , his mind provides, and he can’t help but wonder…

**May 10th, 2016**

There was a bright flash of light, and a sound so loud that it was felt rather than heard.

Alexander Hilbert had expected pain. And perhaps there had been pain, but if so, it was so overwhelming that he could feel nothing at all.

And then everything else became nothing.

And for all that he knew he was dying, and his research with him, the last thought on his mind was this:

_This time I made the right choice._

_Would she have been proud of me?_

  


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [No Going Back](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19979005) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory)
  * [Masks](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22399258) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory)
  * [Relief](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25559059) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory)
  * [25 Nights](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27112270) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory)
  * [The way you look at me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27958211) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory)




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